Quote Of The Day

Referring to Edward Snowden's run to daylight, Atrios writes at Eschaton:

Apparently we are at war with Russia, China, Venezuela, and Ecuador and not a single journalist David Gregory knows in Washington has ever published classified information.

While I Was Sleeping

If you have any mind left at all, you can't help but wonder what Snowden's actions will ultimately mean to our freedom. The specious claims, sadly many by progressives, that what he has done has somehow hurt the United States make it pretty clear that there is a vast difference between the people who run things and the rest of us. My guess is that whatever happens here, it will be something that escapes the notice of most Americans. They clearly don't value freedom, even for the chance it gives us to make ourselves safer. Of course, what they see on television and in the press certainly doesn't make that concern any greater.

Taylor Marsh put that thought pretty well today:

Too many elite media types make light of just how important what’s happened in our country during the Bush-Obama era is ... What’s been instituted, funded by millions of dollars and government partnerships since 9/11 cannot possibly be mitigated in the few weeks that the Edward Snowden story has been ricocheting through the country and around the world.

Media Frenzy as Snowden Skips Hong Kong for Russia (& Beyond)

What people ought to be asking themselves, among other things, is why Ecuador, which hasn't ever had any real beefs with the US that most Latin American countries haven't, is looking to harbor its second asylum seeker from the US. Could it be that maybe we're the ones who don't understand what the rule of law means anymore?

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.

What If It Was Terrorism?

Image credit: Aaron Tang/Flickr

A few weeks ago, I'd written about the misuse of the word "terrorism":

In the context of the bombing in Boston last Monday, whether or not it's terrorism depends on the motivations of the bombers, not on whether or not people were frightened by it. That is why I've avoided using the term, and will continue to until such time as the people responsible have been found and tried for what they've done, or until they admit what they've done and explain why in some other circumstance that doesn't involve duress.

Any opinions expressed using the word "terrorism" should, I think, be viewed in that context. Words mean particular things. When people use those words in other ways, then their opinions should be viewed more skeptically.

Word Use: Terrorism

[unless otherwise noted, all links are from original articles]

Today, Gawker's Hamilton Nolan looked at how we view terrorism from a different angle. Suppose the Tsarnaev brothers' actions actually were terrorism, in the proper meaning of that term. What does that say about our reaction to it, relative to Sunday's shooting in New Orleans?

The shooting of nineteen innocent people, including two children, at a Mother's Day celebration in New Orleans yesterday was an act of violence only gaudy enough to hold the nation's attention momentarily. Shortly after the bodies were cleared, the FBI said they "have no indication the shooting was an act of terrorism. 'It’s strictly an act of street violence in New Orleans.'" At that, we were free to let our attention drift. In America, all villainy is not created equal.

Terrorism and the Public Imagination

All too true, I'm afraid. For instance, how many people are up in arms about the mayhem occurring in some of our major cities, that often involves victims who are children under the age of 19? The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) noted back in 2009:

Gang homicide victims were significantly younger than nongang homicide victims in all five cities [that were included in this report] (Table 1). Whereas 27%–42% of the gang homicide victims were aged 15–19 years, only 9%–14% of the nongang homicide victims were in this age group. Approximately 80% of all homicide victims were male in each city; however, Los Angeles, Newark, and Oklahoma City still reported significantly higher proportions of male victims in gang homicide incidents compared with nongang homicide incidents. In Los Angeles and Oakland, a significantly higher proportion of gang victims were Hispanic and, in Oklahoma City, a significantly higher proportion of gang victims were non-Hispanic black compared with nongang victims. In at least three of the five cities, gang homicides were significantly more likely than nongang homicides to occur on a street and involve a firearm (Table 2). More than 90% of gang homicide incidents involved firearms in each city. For nongang homicides, firearms were involved in 57%–86% of the incidents. Gang homicides also were most likely to occur in afternoon/evening hours in the majority of the five cities; however, comparisons were not examined because the data were missing for 23% of nongang homicide incidents. In Los Angeles, Oakland, and Oklahoma City, gang homicides occurred significantly more frequently on weekends than did nongang homicides.

Morbidity and Mortality: Gang Homicides — Five U.S. Cities, 2003–2008

While this information is five years old, I doubt it's gotten that much better since then. Besides, does anyone remember seeing live television feeds all across the country of police shutting down Los Angeles to hunt suspects in a drive-by shooting? Me neither.

I've excerpted the stats from the CDC report's Table 1 below for Los Angeles:

Age group (yrs)	No.	(%)
0–14	15	(2.3)
15–19	199	(30.8)
20–24	185	(28.6)

Morbidity and Mortality: Gang Homicides — Five U.S. Cities, 2003–2008 (Table 1)

In one major U.S. city alone, almost 400 young people under the age of 25 were killed due to gang-related violence. Of course, L.A.'s gang problem is among the worst, but once again, we see no huge outcry about this. Why is that? Part of the reason is undoubtedly that the victims are mostly poor and non-white, but partly it just seems to be what we expect in some parts of America. Yet it kills far more children than terrorism has in the last decade.

Now that I think of it, there was a much greater stink about the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, wasn't there? In L.A. alone, the equivalent of one Newtown happens every three years or so due to gang-related violence, if we just look at the first line of that table. If all other forms of homicide whose victims that age are included, there's one a year there.

To me, this seems utterly irrational - obsessing about something that has proven to be pretty harmless in comparison to the things that are really killing us, and ignoring or downplaying the things that do, but could be prevented. It's the state of American political discourse these days.

Just What Should We Expect?

Caption: The IRS building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. What evil are they up to now? Image credit: U.S. Treasury/Wikimedia

It's a day of the week ending in 'y', so it should be no surprise that someone thinks the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is up to no good:

Let’s be very clear: because the Internal Revenue Service holds so much private data, and because it can make people’s lives absolutely miserable, it is of paramount importance in our political system that it both is, and is perceived as, an apolitical entity. If it discriminated against tea party groups that attempted to register as 501(c)4 social welfare organizations, then that’s a grave offense, and it needs to be investigated thoroughly and dealt with severely.

The IRS was wrong to target the tea party. They should’ve gone after all 501(c)4s

Face it, anyone who has ever had to fill out a tax form, and perhaps gotten advice from the IRS that it is in no way to be held responsible for, is going to want to give the IRS the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, that's not a valid reason for assuming it's wrong.

Most of the folks I've seen criticizing this on Twitter, at least, haven't bothered to find out what is actually the norm here. To tell you the truth, I haven't either, but the difference between me and them is this:

I don't assume I know what's going on.

Let's try a thought experiment - suppose you have what you think is a winning strategy for picking lottery numbers, yet you don't ever win the lottery. Is the lottery commission conspiring against you? Of course not. The reality is that the numbers are chosen at random, so even if you understand how those numbers were chosen, the small sample size of winning numbers just about guarantees that you aren't going to win any particular lottery. Any honest mathematician would tell you that.

What we expect isn't necessarily the truth, even when we use logic and reason to arrive at that expectation. In order to understand what you should be expecting, you have to understand what's normal, and how the system works, and what's possible. How the system works in this case is that the IRS is expected to investigate claims for non-profit applications. If, as is the case with the Tea Party, there's a lot of money behind that applicant, then there's probably more reason to investigate.

But what's the norm? How often does the IRS investigate such claims? In a set of Twitter messages today, CNBC's John Harwood explained the IRS's position:

Twitter message(s) from @JohnJHarwood

I've combined the content of several messages into one screenshot graphic. As you can see, to some extent the IRS went beyond what it's expected to do, but there were a great many other organizations investigated for similar reasons.

Expecting the IRS to investigate all of these organizations, as Ezra Klein did in the article I quoted in that first block quote, may be somewhere between difficult and impossible. The IRS, too, will feel the sequestration crunch. Do we really expect them to investigate all organizations, whether they are known to have ties to big money or questionable people or organizations? My guess, and once again it's only a guess, is that we can't really. The number and type of such organizations is bound to increase, given that there is little legal framework for them at the moment. Plus, as we've seen recently, enforcing regulations and the law on those with power and money isn't a big government priority right now.

I can't say whether this is the norm or not at this point, but any serious investigation of this claimed discrimination needs to include a discussion of that point that involves actual evidence. That may take a while, which is probably beyond the attention span of the American public. Meanwhile, though, I'd say if there was any political organization in this country better able to take care of itself, it's probably one of the two major political parties. I suspect they'll soldier on somehow.

Meanwhile, what we should learn from all of this is to ask those basic questions with any story, both of ourselves and the press. What is normal? What is possible? How is the system supposed to work? Ask those questions, and at least you'll have some credible notion what the problem is.

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.

Quote Of The Day

Attaturk, at his FireDogLake location:

Ron Fournier of the National Journal manages to be more pathetic than Alex Jones over the Boston bombing.

Just take your soiled slacks and retire already

[links from original]

There isn't much I can add to that, really. At least Jones' fevered imagination was able to come up with a scary secret conspiracy we should all be peeing our pants over. Fournier's justification is that we weren't at work when it happened.

It's hard to be more pathetic than that, but I await our punditocracy's next attempt to surpass this. Just like the act that spawned this nonsense, there's clearly nothing we can do about this plague of idiocy. We might as well laugh about it, right?

Isolation And What Follows

Here's an example of why I was interested that Chris Hayes now has his own prime time show on MSNBC:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In it, Hayes interviews Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein and three people you've probably never heard of about how the sequestration is affecting Americans who don't live in DC. In addition to the extraordinary step of interviewing people who have some local knowledge of how it's affecting them, he also got some intelligent commentary out of Ezra Klein.

What struck me most about this conversation is mostly contained in the second segment, where Hayes mentions that one of the things Congress is complaining about is that the White House has cut back on tours. Of all the things we don't need. Then, one of his guests, Heather McGhee, stated what is probably obvious to most of us who don't live or work in the vicinity of DC:

"The issue behind this is the donor class in Washington, and that little goody [the White House tours] is what goes to donors."

And later:

Hayes: "Is there a point where the effects of austerity go from being invisible to being visible, where the folks in DC wake up?"

McGhee: "It becoming visible to people out in communities is one thing. It becoming visible, beyond White House tours, to the people who are decision makers is a completely different thing. What more visibility do you need than 20 million people who are un- or underemployed?"

[Those are my attempts at transcription, by the way, not MSNBC's.]

It really is, as she concluded, a democracy question, as in how much longer can our country go on when the needs of its citizens are so clearly beyond the attention span of the people who run it? At Corrente, Lambert Strether refers to DC as Versailles, the isolated and largely dysfunctional seat of the French government at the time of the revolution. That isolation has been a subject of discussion here a time or two, as well.

And no, I don't know the answer to my question. I hope that when change happens it won't be of the sort that obviated Versailles, but at this point I'm not optimistic. Too many people need to learn too many things for that to happen.

Smileworthy Events

Things haven't been too fun lately, for a lot of us. I'm not going to try to explain why. If you don't feel that way, you should count yourself very lucky.

Still, I've seen a couple of things today that ought to induce a smile or two. The first is at Naked Capitalism. Go to today's links, and scroll down the the "antidote de jour". If that doesn't bring a smile to your face, then I suspect you've had a really bad day, and I'm sorry.

The second is a bit more subtle, and this blurb explains it:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As I mentioned somewhat obliquely recently, MSNBC has done its best to be the "other" Fox News, a place where one could reliably be told how great the Democrats were and how awful the Other Guys are. It's the place where they hired "news anchor" Al Sharpton, who had announced that he wouldn't criticize President Obama. I don't care how good a President is, there will be times when he (or she) deserves criticism. I would make no such vow regarding anyone I supported for President, because, as we saw even with Jill Stein, my favored candidate last time, there is no reason to think that any candidate will do everything the way I'd want him to. If you're not willing to criticize, you're not a journalist. You're a propagandist.

MSNBC is also the network that fired Phil Donahue for telling a truth that the Democrats were uncomfortable admitting back in 2002 - that the basis for our war with Iraq was bogus.

All of which tells me that it's amazing Chris Hayes got this chance. He's a rare thing in television news - someone who loves the intellectual challenge of discussing an issue beyond the conventional view of party politics. Since the departure of Dylan Ratigan, he seems to be the only reporter there who is willing to discuss topics, and points of view, that MSNBC's advertisers might be uncomfortable with. In short, the guy's a journalist, and a good one. That's so rare in television news these days that even thoughtful conservatives ought to find his show interesting.

I don't get cable television, but I'll try to tune in somehow. Meanwhile, if you have cable, I recommend you give it a look.

Ripped From The Headlines

Caption: 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He didn't want the job, but had to run anyway. Twice.

Image credit: Jessica Rinaldi/Wikimedia

The holiday season tends to be one of the slowest times of year in the news business. How else to explain this?

Tagg Romney told the Boston Globe that his father, Mitt Romney, only reluctantly ran for president.

Said Romney's eldest son: "He wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life. He had no desire to run."

He added: "If he could have found someone else to take his place... he would have been ecstatic to step aside. He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn't love the attention."

Son Says Romney Was a Reluctant Candidate

Beyond a sudden interest in the opinions of the rich and pointless, I can't see any reason why anyone would want to cover this. Well, maybe to generate lots of commentary, of which my favorite was this one by a commenter "nctodc":

Nothing says truly reluctant like doing something twice.

Son Says Romney Was a Reluctant Candidate

Yep. Comics just weren't getting enough chuckles, apparently.

(h/t Earthbound Misfit, I. I never would have seen this.)

Quote Of The Day

"Lying is a skill like any other. And if you want to maintain a level of excellence, you have to practice constantly." - Garak

That classic line, uttered by "retired" spy Garak in an episode of Deep Space Nine, came to mind today as I was reading today's column by Glenn Greenwald. In that bit of dialogue, Worf, with whom Garak has been talking, doesn't believe a word he says, even though he sounds convincing. Why would anyone do otherwise, you'd wonder? In that context, Greenwald asks a very good question today, regarding the promise of some members of the so-called "progressive" press to start being harder on President Obama, now that he's not eligible for re-election any longer:

Over the past four years, they have justified their supine, obsequious posture toward the nation's most powerful political official by appealing to the imperatives of electoral politics: namely, it's vital to support rather than undermine Obama so as to not help Republicans win elections. Why won't that same mindset operate now to suppress criticisms of the Democratic leader?

Progressive media claims they'll be 'tougher' on Obama now

Why indeed? As Greenwald goes on to point out, these people still have plenty of motivation to continue ignoring these issues, and few to tackle them. If they really feel strongly about any of Obama's rather numerous failures to restrain the security state, help the nation recover from the 2008 crash and punish those guilty of causing it, renouncing torture and imprisonment without trial (in deed as well as words), or ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan any sooner than had already been negotiated, why in the world wouldn't they have said something before now?

Plus, quite frankly, the time to influence Barack Obama about anything is over. He has absolutely no motivation now to do anything beyond what will allow him to cash in on his influence after he's left, much as Bill Clinton has done. That means he's going to do what the rich want, not us. This is so obvious a point that, were I not addressing a progressive audience, it would almost seem superfluous.

But, I am addressing progressives, or at least I would if any were interested in reading about what idiots they've been the last few years. That means that I have to point out the obvious, which is that lying is both a skill and a habit, and these folks have been lying to us for years, so we don't go all stupid and do the wrong thing. Why in the world would we trust them now?

I don't know what's sadder - that people who are supposed to be informing us about what's going on in politics are so clueless that they think this change matters, and that they are capable of accomplishing it, or that so many progressives are clearly foolish enough to think that being treated this way makes sense.

UPDATE/Afterword: I forgot to add this bit of wisdom from that Greenwald article:

Once you vow unconditional, permanent loyalty to a politician and a party - once you demonstrate that you will support them no matter what they do - why would you possibly expect that they will do anything but ignore you? A rational politician, by definition, pays attention to those whose support is conditional and uncertain, not to those who loudly proclaim that it is a solemn duty to support that politician and his party under all circumstances. That's just the basic rules governing how power works, of negotiations and politics: those who eagerly renounce all their leverage make themselves inconsequential and impotent.

Progressive media claims they'll be 'tougher' on Obama now

I have written this countless times, and explained at length, and often, why it's true. Yet I have had arguments with progressives where they'd claim exactly the opposite - that only unfailing loyalty is rewarded. The phenomenon Greenwald refers to is as ubiquitous and self-evident as the relationship between mass and gravity, yet these people argue that it is not true. This is why I laugh and cry simultaneously when progressives talk about how stupid conservatives are. The sad truth is that, when it comes to politics at least, the average progressive makes the average sack of hammers look like an extra-large shipment of artificial intelligence.

A More Interesting Debate

Image credit: Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

There's something rather interesting happening regarding the presidential debates tomorrow that I feel I should pass along. Democracy Now! will be holding a sort of electronic alternative debate for progressive candidates the same evening:

As President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney square off in the first presidential debate in Denver on October 3, Democracy Now! will broadcast live from Denver with a special expanded presidential debate from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. ET. We will air the debate, pausing after questions to include equal time responses from two presidential contenders who were shut out of the official debate: Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party.

Third Party Candidates to Join in Real Time on Democracy Now!’s Live Coverage of First Pres. Debate

While it's a bit disappointing that Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate for President, will not be part of the debate, it's still more likely to be interesting than the pat nonsense the major party candidates will be spouting. Stein and Anderson have principles, and are running to make them known. I'd rather listen to that. That's why I'm disappointed that Johnson won't be there. I'd rather listen to a principled discussion of issues, even if that includes someone with whom I disagree.

If you feel that way, check out the Democracy Now! website for a link to the feed. Since it's billed as being part of their debate coverage, my guess is that it will be part of their regular stream program.

(h/t Joyce Arnold for pointing this out.)

The Crap It Comes From Both Sides Now

Caption: The first printing press of the Tombstone Epitaph, Tombstone, Arizona.

Image credit: Cujo359

Another in a long line of examples of why our press can't do a good job of reporting on the things it should be reporting on comes from Politico:

On Wednesday [Politico reporter Ben] White tweeted to his 8,500 followers, “Yesterday the right screamed at me. Today it’s the left. Must be doing it right.”

‘Vapidity’: Guardian‘s Greenwald Sics Rabid Followers on Politico‘s White

Of course, the latin-speaking philosophers among us will recognize this as a sort of perverse, double-edge argumentum ad populum. After all, if these folks don't like you, you must have something going for you, right? Why don't people who are confronted with such a phenomenon ever think that there might be another explanation that's, shall we say, less flattering? From that same article, they quote press critic and SnS blogrollee Glenn Greenwald:

Many people would read White’s message and carry on. Not the Guardian‘s perpetually self-serious Glenn Greenwald. “Here’s the motto for journalistic vapidity,” he wrote, linking to White’s tweet for his near 100K followers to have a look at.

...

In a sassy email, Greenwald told FBDC we didn’t understand the point he was trying to make. “There is nothing wrong with criticizing both left and right. I do that all the time.” He continued, “The problem is journalists who believe that receiving criticisms from both sides is proof that they are doing something right- as though centrism is the inherently superior position. It isn’t. Sometimes one is criticized by both sides because the centrist view is wrong, or becaude [sic] both sides recognize your error.”

‘Vapidity’: Guardian‘s Greenwald Sics Rabid Followers on Politico‘s White

For that matter, why don't they wonder if maybe they've just screwed up differently on different days?

Just thinking out loud here, but maybe it's time that some folks stopped considering the character of people who are criticizing them, and more time checking whether the criticism is right or not.

The Press' Priorities, And Ours

Caption: The first Stanhope press for the German newspaper Iserlohner Kreisanzeiger und Zeitung

Image credit: Bubo/Wikimedia

Dan Hind makes an interesting point about the priorities of the press, and the relationship of those priorities to those of the public in an a column at Al Jazeera:

There is no evidence that the public would only want stories about Rihanna if they were given some say in shaping the editorial agenda of news organisations. There is no evidence that people would spend most of any research funds they controlled on psychic pets and cancer-curing vegetables. I am sure that neither of these people would dream of making a similar, unfounded generalisations about any group of adults in society. Imagine for a moment the uproar if they did. But they are happy to assert that the public as a whole is so witless that it cannot decide how to spend its own money.

Fear of the people: A critique of scientific orthodoxy

There are a few points I can think of making here:

First, I have no idea who Rihanna is. My guess is she's a celebrity of some sort, probably in show business. Yes, she's a singer, or so MTV and a fairly large swath of the English-speaking public seem to believe. She's trending on Twitter, or was. I've never trended on Twitter, so I guess you could say that's another thing I don't have personal experience of.

Still, there's something I do have experience of, and that's the public's priorities. I don't blame Ben Goldacre, a science journalist Hind criticizes in that column, for writing that much of what the public would do with research funds, if given the chance, would be trivial or nonsensical. Still, as Hind points out, there's plenty of trivial research that's funded by supposedly serious organizations. That's the nature of the beast. Someone was fascinated with why hair, amber, and gold leaf stuck together sometimes, and a couple of centuries later I can write to the world on a preternaturally complex device in a coffee shop miles from any big communications centers.

So, my guess is that it might benefit us to put a small amount of research funding into the hands of amateurs, because every once in a great while, they'd come up with something few others would. Most of it would be pure nonsense, though. If that's elitism, sue me.

The other point is this one - why do we talk about things like Rihanna, or the Phillies, or any other bits of trivial nonsense that seem to lead the "most popular news" lists most days? I can tell you one thing: it's something to talk about with people you have nothing else in common. Back when I worked among conservatives, that was something you could usually talk about with no more than mildly spirited disagreement. In fact, it's sometimes a good insight into peoples' thinking on other issues. Conservatives tend to be much more likely to give up on a sports star when it looks like his skills are waning, for instance.

Which brings us to a reason that all that trivia is so popular - many of us are at least somewhat interested, even if only in self-defense. It's hard to say that about politics, economics, most science, or just about anything else, particularly if it requires a lot of time and some smarts to understand. And, as Hind says, that's not a reason to think that it's really a priority with us. It's just something we can talk about without killing each other.

This is a reason I discount the idea that the press' priorities are their readers' priorities. They're not. The press, mostly, is motivated by profit. We readers are motivated by wanting to know about the things we want to know about. Sometimes those motivations coincide, but I think it's safe to say that they don't at least as often.

UPDATE: I corrected the spelling of Dan Hind's name. In the initial version of this article, I'd spelled it right three times, and wrong once.

Evolution Happens In The Unlikeliest Of Places

Caption: A rotary printing press that looks to be from the early 20th Century. It's now an exhibit in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, in Paris.

Image credit: Carol Guillaume/Photopedia

Glenn Greenwald published an interesting article yesterday on an opinion piece by CNN reporter LZ Granderson. Granderson's essay extols the virtues of government secrecy, and the respect that journalists like him, apparently, have for it:

We are a nosy country.

Though to be fair, it's not entirely our fault. Between the 24/7 news cycle, social media and reality TV, we have been spoon fed other people's private business for so long we now assume it's a given to know everything. And if there are people who choose not to disclose, they must be hiding something. Being told that something's "none of your business" is slowly being characterized as rude, and if such a statement is coming from the government, it seems incriminating.

Times have changed. Yet, not everything is our business. And in the political arena, there are things that should be and need to be kept quiet.

Don't be nosy about Fast and Furious

Greenwald referred to this as a "self-mocking" column. What he meant by that isn't that Granderson is being sarcastic writing what he did. Rather, he thinks that Granderson really believes it. I've read the column in its entirety, and I have to agree that it looks like Granderson is serious. If what has actually happened here is that we've ventured into Poe territory, where it's impossible to tell the difference between an honestly expressed opinion and parody, then it probably makes little difference, because, as Greenwald points out, there are so many other journalists who clearly do believe this with all their hearts:

Recall that on the day that WikiLeaks began publishing diplomatic cables — revealing all sorts of deceit, corruption and illegality — CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was completely indifferent to the revelations themselves, but was furious that the U.S. Government allowed these disclosures to take place and thus forced him and his viewers to learn what the U.S. Government and its allies were doing in the dark. Or recall the debate I had with CNN’s Jessica Yellin and Fran Townsend in which both insisted that WikiLeaks should be criminally prosecuted for the leaks it enabled. Or just survey the bizarrely personal, unprofessional and falsehood-filled expressions of contempt for Assange that have been spewing forth from the British media class, many of whom (not coincidentally) were and are ardent, public supporters of the war policies he helped to expose and subvert and, more generally, religious believers in the inherent Goodness of the West and its governments’ conduct in the world.

CNN journalist: don’t be nosy

The sad fact is that journalists like Granderson, or at least, the LZ Granderson who wrote that column (see Afterword), are the successful products of the journalistic ecosystem in which they find themselves. They certainly are not an aberration, and given the way things work in DC and America generally, no one should be surprised.

To see why, let's sidestep for a moment into the question of what evolution really is. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould once wrote that evolution was the spread of excellence.

Profiles In Hackery

Caption: The first Stanhope press for the German newspaper Iserlohner Kreisanzeiger und Zeitung

Image credit: Bubo/Wikimedia

A couple of articles about people in the press caught my attention today. Taken separately, they're fascinating examples of how little in the way of intellectual honesty you need to demonstrate these days to write for a top American news organization, as long as what you write pleases the folks who run things. Taken together, they serve to explain a lot about why we know so little about what's going on in our own country these days, or at least why it's so hard to find out.

The first tale comes to us care of Yasha Levine, who has begun a project called “Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics” (SHAME). It's the story of Malcolm Gladwell, a man who has spent most of his adult life shilling for one powerful lobby or another. That wouldn't be a problem, I suppose, if he weren't also masquerading as a journalist.

Humorous Serendipity

Once in a while, a serendipitous combination of a photo and an unrelated article can produce a chuckle, as I found when I visited Reuters today:

Image credit: Screenshot of this Reuters article by Cujo359

[Click to enlarge.]

Needless to say, those are not embassy personnel in the photo. They're Queen Elizabeth and some other members of her family, including Kate Middleton of the amazing fashion evolution, at some ceremony or other. They weren't in Libya at the time.

Quote Of The Day

Dean Baker, discussing an article by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman:

Thomas Friedmanland bears little resemblance to the world of gravity and arithmetic that the rest of us inhabit.

Thomas Friedman Presents Evidence of a Skills Mismatch in His NYT Column

There are times when being unburdened by conventional notions can be a good thing, but Thomas Friedman seems to have taken that concept far beyond where a "good thing" ends.

Friedman's article has to do with the current "free market" orthodoxy that the depression we are now in is due to some gigantic skills mismatch between what American companies need and what American labor can provide. Unfortunately, this "skills mismatch" usually amounts to people being unwilling to apply their skills for slave wages under whatever conditions their employers want to provide. The actual deficit in our economy at the moment, which is not helped at all by giving employers what they want here, is consumer demand. Part of the reason consumer demand is lower is because our wages are either stagnant or lower, depending on what income bracket we find ourselves in.

None of which, I'm sure, is what Friedman was referring to. The Earth is really only so flat.

American Amnesia

Since I just got around to playing this show on my DVR, I'm a bit late to comment on this Moyers & Compamy program featuring Marty Kaplan, who discussed the state of American journalism and the effect that has had on our society and politics:

Particularly interesting was this exchange, in which Kaplan and Bill Moyers discuss how little perspective Americans can gain from what they see in television news:

BILL MOYERS: How did it happen? How did we sell what belonged to everyone?

MARTY KAPLAN: By believing that what is, is what always has been and what should be. The notion that what goes on is actually made by people, changes through time, represents the deployment of political power. That notion has gone away. We think it's always been this way. People now watching these CNN and Fox. They think this is how it works. They don't have a sense of history. The amnesia, which has been cultivated by journalism, by entertainment in this country, helps prevent people from saying, "Wait a minute, that's the wrong path to be on."

BILL MOYERS: Amnesia, forgetfulness? You say that they're cultivating forgetfulness?

MARTY KAPLAN: Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: Deliberately?

MARTY KAPLAN: Look at the way in which it-- the march toward war in Iran, if that's what's going to happen, is being--

BILL MOYERS: Or slithering toward war.

MARTY KAPLAN: Well, it-- when we get there we may feel as though the serpent bit us, no matter how we got to that point. But Iran should be covered through the prism of what happened in Iraq. All of the neoconservatives and right-wingers, who called for us to go into Iraq because of W.M.D.'s and because Saddam was bad. There is a history there. That history is within living memory of a lot of grownups in this country.

And unless people are willing to do the hard work of presenting the history and holding people accountable for the past, we will be condemned as it's been said, to repeat it first in tragedy and then in farce.

Marty Kaplan on Big Money's Effect on Big Media

I really started to notice this lack of perspective after the 9/11 attacks. The constant drumbeat about how it was utterly unprecedented that America faced enemies that weren't out in the open, and had to be ferreted out even if that meant giving up our freedoms, was utterly mind-boggling to me. I remember the Cold War, and the paranoia of those times. Anyone who was in his late thirties at that time should have remembered all that, too, I remember thinking. We were afraid during the Cold War, and there were certainly folks who insisted that we had to give up our freedoms to save them, but we also had leaders who were smart and principled enough to avoid doing that. After discussing some of that in an essay entitled "History, Blah, Blah", I tried to explain why things are so different now:

What's changed since then, you ask? I'm not really sure. I think one answer, though, is that back in the 1950s through the 1980s, we were still led by people who remembered fighting despotism in two world wars. By that I mean, they literally remembered it. President Harry S Truman was a WWI veteran. Presidents John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush were both WWII veterans, and both were nearly killed in combat missions. Joseph Kennedy, Jr., JFK's brother, was killed when his bomber was destroyed testing a new munition. Contrast that with Vietnam, where it was rare for the sons of America's leading families to be involved. John Kerry is one of the few exceptions I can think of. Vietnam-era scions President George W. Bush and Vice President Dan "Potatoe Head" Quayle avoided serving in Vietnam. The elder Bush and the two Kennedys volunteered for service, where Little Bush and Quayle voluntarily stayed away. In contrast to the elites of our parents' and grandparents' generations, the elites of the baby boomer and younger generations have learned that they can do whatever they want, and leave all the sacrificing to the rest of us.

History, Blah, Blah

Interestingly, Expat mentioned in a comment to that article the very phenomenon Kaplan is referring to, which Expat felt was a deliberate dumbing-down of the discourse we see on television and elsewhere. I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but it's having that effect, anyway, and I suspect that's not lost on the people who run things.

Why keep going on about history? Anyone who remembers the Cold War ought to realize that our supposed war on terrorism sounds awfully familiar. So would anyone who remembered the Great Depression realize that our recent economic collapse sounds familiar, anyone familiar with Prohibition would recognize the folly of our "war on drugs", and anyone who remembers the arms race that caused World War I would recognize the potential danger of our current level of defense spending. There are subtle differences with each of those analogies, of course, but the basic folly is the same. Not remembering how things were is a dangerous condition, and we suffer from it to an extent that should worry any thoughtful person.

All Dressed Up...

Caption: Is this how to dress for the White House Correspondents' Dinner? Probably not.

Glenn Greenwald sums up the relationship between the politicians and the press in our nation's capital, in a discussion of how the Obama Administration rewards those who make it look good in the news:

This weekend, the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was held, and it is — as Gawker‘s Hamilton Nolan explained in the best analysis ever of that event — the purest expression of the total blending of political power, media subservience, and vapid celebrity in one toxic, repulsive, and destructive package. It’s imperial rot — the Versailles virus — in its most virulent form. Of course, Stephen Colbert, in the best political speech of the last decade, used his appearance at that banquet in 2006 to clearly set forth the rules by which they function:

But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!

None of that has changed. When I first began writing about politics, I mistakenly thought that the bias of the Bush-worshipping establishment media was a pro-GOP bias. It isn’t (and it’s obviously not a “liberal bias”). That’s not how they function. They aren’t nearly so substantive as to be driven by any sort of belief or ideology or anything like that. Their religion is the worship of political power and authority (or, as Jay Rosen says, their religion is the Church of the Savvy). Royal court courtiers have long competed with one another to curry favor with the King and his minions in exchange for official favor, and this is just that dynamic. Political power is what can give them their treats — their “exclusive” interviews and getting tapped on their grateful heads to get secret documents and invited to White House functions and being allowed into the sacred Situation Room – so it’s what they revere and serve.

Dog Training The Press Corps

[links from original]

What is the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, and how do the politicians in power use it to "train" the press, as Greenwald put it? From that link in the Greenwald quote, Hamilton Nolan's opening paragraph characterizes it pretty well:

Do you know who knows that the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is a shameful display of whoredom that makes the "average American" vomit in disgust, or, more likely, simply continue to disregard the findings of any ostensibly neutral journalistic outlet in favor of their own ideology of choice, because they have a fully solidified belief that the "mainstream media" is little more than a bunch of ball-lapping lapdogs to whoever's in power? Everyone. Everyone knows this. Even the members of the media who attend the White House Whores Despondence Dinner know this, deep down, whether they admit it openly or lie defensively about how they, the true professionals, can stand in a receiving line to backslap and shake the hands of politicians like groupies and pose for pictures with Ashton Kutcher and Alec Baldwin and Stephen Baldwin and Anna Paquin and no, it does not matter tomorrow, because they are professionals who would never be compromised by the fact that they just spent their favorite evening of the year joshing playfully with the powerful officials they are supposed to be afflicting and reveling in their close proximity to the celebrities that they wish they were.

Fuck the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner

It's hard to think of a more apt description. Taylor Marsh gave it a try, though:

AT THE 1% INTERSECTION OF ELITISM, access and insider greasing.

Pres. Obama at the Political Insiders Prom

Perhaps the most damning thing about this conclave is the name itself - it's supposed to be a fraternity of the press, not the people they cover. It's supposed to be about having a good time poking fun at each other. Yet, the one person most of us know of who has ever said something funny at this gathering was never invited back, because, ironically, he told the truth. That paragraph Greenwald quoted gets it right in ways most of the attendees are all too aware. The politicians and their other enablers control this form of access as they do most access in that town.

If you have to ask yourself why the DC press looks the other way when whoever is in power is getting us involved in useless wars as they make our lives progressively worse, then you have no idea how access is managed there. The politicians use it as a rolled up newspaper, and only the hardiest dogs disobey.

Now For Something Really Amazing

Bashing Time magazine just never gets old. Nearly every month, there seems to be something that makes it worth taking a screenshot of and then laughing about. Here's this month's screenshot:

Image credit: Screenshot and annotations of this Time magazine page by Cujo359

There I was, gazing at this seemingly amazing sight of two 100,000 light year-wide objects colliding with each other at some ungodly speed (BTW, thanks, Mary), when I glance at the lower right corner of the screen and notice the headline that's part of the magazine's "While you're here, you might want to waste more time reading..." feature, which I circled in green to make sure that you, too, do not miss what's really amazing today:

Kate Middleton's Amazing Fashion Evolution

Now, I get the idea that not everyone is interested in astronomy, and I also get the idea that some people actually are interested in fashion. Yes, I'm not one of those people. However, even assuming I were interested in fashion, I suspect I'd be less than amazed by Kate Middleton's fashion evolution, whatever that might be.

If your interests run more along the lines mine usually do, you might need a bit of background here. Kate Middleton is married to some British prince or another (Andrew? No, it's the other one), and is thus very famous. I mainly find her recognizable because I'm a heterosexual male who isn't dead yet, and she's frequently featured on the magazine covers one sees in the checkout lines at the supermarket. Why others find her interesting, I'm less sure, but I suppose they have their reasons.

The reason I don't think it's terribly amazing that Ms. Middleton has changed her fashion sense is that she's a young woman, and she's now a member of one of the more visible families on the planet. Heck, I'd be amazed if she didn't change her wardrobe. Anyone who remembers how girls dress in high school and college should know what I'm talking about with the "she's a young woman" part.

So, why does Time magazine, who surely must understand these things better than I, think this is so amazing? I have no idea. I didn't check the link. If you do, please feel free to let me know.

To get full credit, though, be prepared to tell me why I should care.

For any U.K. readers who might have happened by, please understand that this isn't about some distaste or disinterest in your culture. I can name the last three Prime Ministers, although I keep having to remind myself that Mr. Blair's first name is not "Phony". This is about Time magazine's seeming desire to keep us entertained with trivia, when there are so many genuinely fascinating things to be interested in.