Bad American

First Jessica Yellin tells the truth (which any media savvy person already knew):

CNN’s congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin, appearing on last night’s Anderson Cooper 360 as a part of a panel discussing Scott McClellan’s new book, What Happened, admitted that during the run-up to war, “the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

You could almost hear her bosses scream: GET THAT B&@*& IN HERE - SHE TOLD THE TRUTH!!!

As Chez Panzienza notes, it didn’t take long for Jessica to do a ‘180′

“Let me say: No, senior corporate leadership never asked me to take out a line in a script or re-write an anchor intro. I did not mean to leave the impression that corporate executives were interfering in my daily work; my interaction was with senior producers. What was clear to me is that many people running the broadcasts wanted coverage that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the country at the time. It was clear to me they wanted their coverage to reflect the mood of the country.”

The statement ends, amusingly, with Yellin saying, “And now I’m going back to work covering the Puerto Rico primary from San Juan.”

From which I’ll never return.

Heh heh. Can you see the metaphorical gun pointed at her head? The one that had ‘your career’ written on the bullets?

As someone who knows, there is no greater sin in the American media, on any level, than to tell the truth about corporate pressure in the newsroom. And Yellin stepped over that line and admitted what most people, Panzienza among them, knew to be true - Corporate Media, far from being ‘liberal’ in any sense, are conservatives at heart and that bias is reflected in the presentation.

Yellin is lucky to keep her job unlike someone such as Phil Donahue who was axed in a obvious political hit.

Panzienza:

Without realizing it, Yellin may have just helped to illustrate a pretty repugnant truism within the rubric of corporate journalism these days: Everything seems designed to insulate the people at the top, protecting them from exposure to accountability. The only factor that truly has the ability to affect the lives of the executives in the adminisphere or their corporate overlords is the ratings. The numbers are the end that will always justify the means; what those means may be is irrelevant — not when ad revenue is at stake. If you think it’s something bordering on tragic that the hierarchy within most modern news operations works like the Mafia — or maybe Congress — you’re right.

For just a moment, Jessica Yellin spoke her mind and pulled back the curtain to reveal the reality of what went on within America’s spineless news media during the rush to war — then thought the better of it and either through subtle coercion or with the unfortunate knowledge that her career may be on the line, “corrected” herself.

The thing is, of course that there are a lot of people within CNN who know how the ‘game’ is played. They don’t like it, but the kids need braces:

Panzienza:

(By the way, the link to Yellin’s statement was sent to me by a senior producer within CNN whom I’ve never met. Gotta love that.)

Like Soviet era dissidents, all they can do is try to leak the truth out to the bloggers who can bring it before a wider audience.

The fallacy, of course, is that anything will change. There is a reason that armed guards and bulletproof glass now rings most large media studios: they are in service to the state and corporate elite and there is a fear at some point, perhaps during a ‘national emergency,’  that the masses may commandeer the airwaves.

They know they’re lying. They don’t care. It’s their job.

Paul Craig Roberts writes more on the subject here.

Two of the worst handmaidens, Billy Kristol and Thomas Friedman, have been rewarded for their treachery to America by the New York Times, which pays these men, who have never been right about anything, to pontificate from columns on its pages. Others, such as Peter Beinart, are installed at the Washington Post and other publications.

The benefit of being a name columnist at a name newspaper is that it puts you on the lucrative speaking circuit. Raimondo reports, for example, that Friedman is paid $65,000 for a speech.

Yes, you may call them whores. Because they are. And note how lucrative the business of lying is in America.

There are far better columnists available than Friedman and Kristol. There’s Raimondo himself. There’s Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair, Pat Buchanan, Lew Rockwell, to name just a few. If the print media had columnists of intelligence and integrity explaining events, instead of propagandists for government and interest groups, the United States would not have wasted eight years (so far) in pointless, illegal, and immoral wars of aggression that have been financed by foreign loans, thus sapping the strength of the dollar and American power.

In America, money, not truth, has the power. If the New York Times had Cockburn instead of Friedman and the Washington Post had Raimondo instead of Beinart, the newspapers would lose advertising revenues and connections with the power brokers.

Roberts is right but he doesn’t drive the point home far enough. WHY would they lose advertising revenue? Because advanced capitalists tend to espouse conservative principles and demand that the media they control through advertising do the same. This goes for your mom and pop weekly newspaper as well as NBC. And these corporate advertisers also know that the network executives share this worldview.

And WHY do these corporate types espouse conservative principles? We don’t discuss this enough. On that level, it’s not simply that conservativism, as practiced in the US, simply allows for the more unfettered accumulation of profit. That’s true. But on the second level, support for the nation’s military-industrial complex in the form of supporting the nations’ wars also sends a great profit ripple across every company that ever supplied a widget to the Pentagon.

And most people who are driven to acquire a great deal of money have a predatory mindset to begin with. So it all fits.

The corporations, the state and the military form a three headed beast that runs the nation on every level and reinforces that control through the media - both in news and entertainment.

Roberts does advance this point that the influence of the three headed beast reaches into academia, again, another so-called bastion of liberalism:

The same problem exists outside the media. Studies produced by think tanks and university professors serve the causes of those who finance them. Does anyone think we will ever see a study from the American Enterprise Institute, for example, that is critical of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians, the military-industrial complex, or the offshoring of American jobs? With rare exceptions, think tanks serve the interests of donors.

The same constraint on truth exists everywhere. I once asked the proprietor of a distinguished engineering firm why he didn’t publicly express his doubts about the World Trade Center buildings. He said it would be the end of his business, that he would be denounced as an anti-American and demonized as a terrorist sympathizer. The fact that he would be an expert giving an expert opinion would carry no weight.

Now let those last two sentences sink in. All the media has to do is smear anyone - no matter how much of an expert - as ‘unpatriotic’ and their opinion carries no weight. Paging Hermann Goering at Nuremberg.

Only a nation of morons could be so controlled. Draw your own conclusions, re: our ‘education’ system.

This is what I teach my sons: in America, the truth is a dangerous thing. It is neither sought nor welcomed at any level - on your job, in your church, and in your town meeting. Even among your own kin. And, instead of setting you free, too much uttering of the truth in this society could very well put you behind bars.

Ask Don Sieglelman.

But the other things the American people don’t know or don’t want to know is how this works on every level, as I wrote above. The day after 9-11 at the radio station I worked at, WJBC AM1230 in Bloomington/Normal, Illinois, Station Manager Red Pitcher came in to the studio and told me in no uncertain terms that, from this day forward, we would be “red, white and blue, 24/7.”

What that meant was no criticism of the President, the attacks on Afghanistan or Iraq, or the civil liberties killing measures of the War on Terror ™. I could not, in good conscience, stop questioning the obvious problems with all three. So a few months after that, I was fired.

And in the end, the truth is a funny thing: it keeps popping it’s head up no matter how many times the right wingers in this country hammer it. Looking back, pretty much everything I said on the air after 9-11 has come true.

Does it matter in a nation which runs on lies and bullshit? Probably only for the dwindling number of educated and aware people in this country. All one has to do is wrap themselves in the flag and scream I’M A PATRIOT!! And then, the argument is over.

So Ms. Yellin gets to keep her cushy job spinning that which she knows to be lies. They say everyone has their price - even for their own soul. And our culture is full of sellers.

UPDATE: Keith Olbermann makes DD the Worst Person In the World. TERRORIST SCARVES!!

I will now starve before I EVER go near a Dunkin Donuts again.

Huffpo

The EVIL SCARF:

My aunt had a scarf that looked just like this. She must have been a terrorist. No worries, she’s been dead for 15 years.

From the article:

Dunkin Donuts has pulled a commercial featuring pitchwoman Rachael Ray wearing a scarf because Michelle Malkin and other conservative observers thought the scarf looked too much like a keffiyeh, what Malkin describes as “the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”

No this isn’t from The Onion. This is how genuinely batshit crazy America has become. It’s just a scarf and one that in no way shape or form reminded me of any jihadist.

Now it will remind me of American jihadists. I guess when I go to Canada or ever travel in Europe again, I’ll be constantly having to apologize for the utter stupidity of my countrymen.

More:

The Boston Globe reports that Dunkin Donuts caved to pressure from the conservative blogosphere — and the fear of a mass boycott — and removed the ad:

The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.
Said the suits in a statement: ”In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial.”

Malkin praised the decision in her column, writing,

It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists. Too many of them bend over backward in the direction of anti-American political correctness….
Fashion statements may seem insignificant, but when they lead to the mainstreaming of violence — unintentionally or not — they matter. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style.

Neither must xenophobic hate and stupidity, it seems.

Read all about it here - Free Times.

A nice piece. At the end it left me a bit winded, wondering how to approach it all.

So let me just write in random notes/stream of consciousness style.

The first feeling I got is an overwhelming sadness in some respects, that this society is so sex negative, especially about LGBT issues, that people can’t express their inner selves truly and make it in this society unless they come out after they’ve already accumulated enough money and fame that it won’t hurt them - all that much.

Having said that, Russo understands that when you play with fire in this society - and touch one of it’s greatest taboos - you will get burned. As a parent of young boys, I have to admit that that part of his story makes me feel very conflicted as it would with many people.

The other aspect that I find fascinating about all of this is the political one. After reading all that Russo went through, AND having been active with Republicans and Democrats (long story), I have really gotten to the point of asking: why bother?

You either have to eat a mile of shit or kiss a thousand asses to get anywhere with either of the houses of the American political mafia. I’ve completely given up on both of them. They are both corrupted to lesser or greater degrees and nothing can be expected of them. Real political revolution will have to come from the outside.

I was young and idealistic at one time and I thought I could help change the world for the better within the system. I no longer feel that way. I wonder if Tim Russo still does?

And if so, why? I just got to the point where I realized the whole system is controlled and manipulated at many echelons above our station. And I hate having puppet masters pulling strings I tell myself aren’t there.

And, in Russo’s case, it does seem to point out that the more you know personally about the system and its people, the more dangerous you become to that system. After awhile you become radioactive.

And the midnight faxes and such - I’ve been there too. I lost my reporter job at the Cedar Rapids Gazette because of that kind of skulduggery. So while I can certainly sympathize with Russo about all the backstabbing he had to endure, I would also remind him that it is true - it does feel so good when you stop banging your head against that wall.

And I have to admit that my impetuousness has, without a doubt, hurt any future chances to get back into print journalism, radio or PR. One thing is clear in the American system - talent only counts for so much. Being a yes-man and suck-up loyal toady counts for far more. The way Russo apparently misses politics I miss radio. But that and $2.39 gets you a bottomless pot at Denny’s. Generally, those we admire and emulate could give a crap about us when we cease to be of any use to them. I have seen that very clearly - no one is your friend in the media or politics business. The minute you lose your position, you lose your ‘friends.’ There are exceptions, so one should treasure them - they are few and far between.

Which brings us to the PD. At least Russo gets replies from Phil (token) Morris. I’ve always said it’s better to be hated than ignored because at least when you’re hated, people are acknowledging you exist (explains a lot about me and the blog, doesn’t it?).

Hey Tim, I got banned from commenting on the PD during the Wide Open Blog fiasco. And I’m sure that Ted Diadiun will never forgive me for calling out his history toward me and others here in this blog. With the PD as with most monopolistic big city newspapers, it’s like the mafia - the bastards never forget - or forgive. And again, talent means nothing.

(As an aside I got accepted into the PD’s readers’ advisory program but I still can’t comment because my account is still blocked - and to this day, Jean Dubail never gave me the courtesy of telling me why. But any newspaper that would put Diadiun in a position of responsibility forfeits good deal of its credibility. As for the craft itself, Schultz got a Pulitzer - ’nuff said)

Having said that, I have to admit to a twinge of jealousy. If I had been given Russo’s opportunity to meet ‘the right people’ in the right places. . . ah hell, who am I kidding? I would have eventually pissed them off when I called them on their bullshit.

If Tim ever reads this, I think we’re quite alike in that respect - we just can’t suffer fools and knaves gladly and when we see something we think is wrong, we comment, often strongly. Those close to me have always asked why I couldn’t just play the fucking game once and awhile. And the best answer to that is it simply isn’t in my DNA. Blame God. It’s the way we were hard-wired - always the shit disturber.

There was a time when shit disturbers were celebrated in America. Not anymore. We’ve become a nation of platitude spouting frat boys.

But I digress.

But I also find Russo’s reliance on psychotherapy to be interesting in that vein as well. Save your money, it’s only a temporary panacea. At the end of the sessions, you’re faced with who you are all over again. Recognize your hard-wiring and learn to appreciate what makes you different and perhaps unique while working to blunt the harder edges of your persona so you can at least function at an elemental level inside a society that is far more insane than you will ever be.

That’ll be $200.

Kidding.

Having written all this drivel, I wish Tim well. Those of us whose lives are magnificent obsessions have a hard road to hoe in this society. No good deed goes unpunished, no sin forgiven. Still, in the end, we keep giving because we have something to give. Sometimes when all other avenues are closed off, it might just be left to blogging - the Internet equivalent of lighting a candle in the darkness. But for some of us, it may be just enough to keep our psyches from hopelessly atrophying.

Without the ability to express oneself, the spirit dies.

Today’s Contemporary Americana!

Tempest in a teapot here in good old Chardon and the usual subjects are coming out of the woodwork to beat breasts about it:

Plain Dealer

An active duty Marine and Army National Guardsman graduating from Chardon High School won’t be allowed to wear their military uniforms while receiving diplomas on Saturday. School officials this week denied a request from Will McDonnell and Tony Workman to celebrate commencement in crisp uniforms. Consider the battle lines clearly drawn. “If they don’t don the robe and cap,” Principal Doug DeLong said, “they won’t walk with their class onstage.” The 18-year-old Geauga County seniors say they’ll forgo the traditional diploma handoff and handshake if it means discarding the dress uniforms they wear so proudly. “Some things are more important than getting a piece of paper,” Workman said.

Outrage! Well, not really.

Chardon Superintendent Joe Bergant said a high school graduation is about saluting the end of an educational journey. Graduates wear traditional regalia in school colors — girls in red, boys in black at Chardon — as a sign of unity and togetherness.

“We don’t want to set a precedent where other people wouldn’t want to wear a cap and gown,” said DeLong, suggesting requests could flow in from Eagle Scouts and members of other organizations.

DeLong agreed to let McDonnell and Workman wear their uniforms and march with the color guard to start Saturday’s program. DeLong said the two — both with the rank of private first class — would be announced and their accomplishments noted.

However, DeLong asked that McDonnell and Workman either change out of their uniforms or slip robes over the top for the actual commencement at Mentor’s Fine Arts Auditorium.

If they choose to stay in their uniforms, they’ll sit behind Chardon’s other 283 graduates and not be called on stage.

Seems like a reasonable compromise to me. They can march in with their uniforms but when the time comes to receive the diploma, these two troops need to be in the what the military might call ‘the uniform of the day.’

And that’s the real issue here. When in the military, troops are subject to various rules put down by higher authority. When I was in training, we always were cognizant of what the uniform of the day would be. And you wore it. Why? Because those in authority told you to.

And in this case, the Army and the Marines are not conducting graduation for Chardon High School.

If these troops are to learn the lesson about respecting authority AND their fellow classmates, they should accept the compromise and learn a little maturity.

Perhaps (and I hate to say this but I’ve seen it) they don’t believe that ‘civilian’ supervisors deserve the same respect their drill sergeant does. They should try that attitude the next time they’re pulled over by the police!

Instead they seem to be all about trying to force their wishes upon the school authority:

McDonnell called the offer “a big slap, to us and to all in the military.” McDonnell, who lives in Claridon Township, took extra classes to meet graduation requirements a semester early in order to attend a 13-week Marine boot camp in February.

Workman, of Chardon, went through the Army’s 10-week basic training last summer and finished classes this year.

Both expect to be in Iraq soon.

“We want to walk across that stage in our uniforms to show that there are young men, right outside your door, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and represent this country,” McDonnell said.

A big slap? Please sonny don’t make this like you’re raising the flag on Iwo Jima. This is a high school graduation. You’ll have many, many opportunities to wear the uniform in public in the coming years and be showered with the adoration you seem to think you deserve for having gotten through basic training/boot camp.

And as an aside, anyone get the impression that these two kids are acting like petulant spoiled brats about this whole thing? By the way, who went to the media? THIS IS HOW THE RIGHT ALWAYS ACCUSES THE LEFT OF BEHAVING! But when you wrap yourself in the flag nowadays, I guess it provides cover to act like spoiled brats who want their way or the highway.

I remember coming back from basic training during the holidays and wearing my Class A’s during Christmas mass. Perfectly cool. But fronting up school authorities over this issue is not cool.

And I wonder whether their recruiters put them up to this? Having worked for Army Recruiting I wouldn’t be surprised.

Typically the random anonymous comments in the Plain Dealer made this out to be some kind of liberal plot to destroy America. If these people knew anything about the administrators they’re maligning, they would know that neither DeLong nor Bergant are unpatriotic at all. They merely wish to preserve some sense of uniformity and dignity to the ceremony.

After all, these young men will get to wear their uniforms quite a lot. But they’ll only be in that cap and gown with their classmates one precious time.

Still you get idiotic posts like this:

The Chardon post office doesn’t even fly the American flag. The hate America first crowd RUINED Cuyahoga county, now they’ve moved to Geauga to do the same. How sad.

I’m sure the people at the Chardon Post Office will be surprised to hear THAT. In fact, last week, I asked why the flag was being flown at half mast. One of the clerks told me it was in honor of a deceased Sheriff. So stuff it where the sun don’t shine AYankee.

The kid is enlist? (and all your base are belong to us - ed.) and they are not proud to have him up on stage????

This “principal” is a Hippy ? how much of the lettuce did he smoke to promote this blither? What a D*** this guy is to not allow the kid to wear his uniform.

“”We don’t want to set a precedent where other people wouldn’t want to wear a cap and gown,” said DeLong,”

DELONG YOU MISERABLE PIECE of liberal crap ! This kid is NOT in the boyscouts and how dare you that you try to make an assimilation that the two are the same.

He is serving YOUR country !!!!!!!

DELONG YOU ARE A COWARD TO THE U.S. NOTHING LESS.

You know, eventually some people in my town will read this blog and have a big hissy fit and accuse me of all kinds of evil intent and perhaps try to destroy my business. But it is people like kupski2 that I stand in opposition to. This kind of mindless hate spewing is exactly how the right is trying to destroy everything that was good about this country - the ability to have disagreements and civil discourse without throwing around this kind of mindless invective.

And yes, these people have made me mad enough to throw the same kind of anger back at them. But they, not the so-called lib’ruls (at least most of the ones I know), aren’t trying to turn this country into some kind of red, white and blue version of a fascist state.

But people like this will take an incident that has been provoked by two students who don’t want to follow the rules and turn it into a object for their near-murderous hate of people they disagree with.

And it seems sometimes, at least in public, that there are far more of these people, the future concentration camp guards of America, then there are of us who ask what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding.

Sorry, no.

Associated Press

Another Bush apparatchnik comes out with a long memoranda in the form of a book arguing he was deceived by the person he flacked for.

Sorry, not buying Scottie.

Let’s run this story through the Bullshit Interpreter ™ shall we? Story in red, my comments in black.

WASHINGTON - Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that President Bush relied on an aggressive “political propaganda campaign” instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war, and that the decision to invade pushed Bush’s presidency “terribly off course.’

Sort of like the Andrea Doria went “off course.”

The Bush White House made “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed” — a time when the nation was on the brink of war, McClellan writes in the book entitled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”

When did Scottie first notice Bush turning away from candor and honesty? When the booze and cocaine wore off?

The way Bush managed the Iraq issue “almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.”

That WAS the plan Scottie. Feigning surprise isn’t your strong suit, is it?

“In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage,” McClellan writes.

That WAS the plan Scottie. And you bravely stood up and, for the good of the country, put a stop to this how?

White House aides seemed stunned by the scathing tone of the book, and Bush press secretary Dana Perino issued a statement that was highly critical of their former colleague.

“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House,” she said. “For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad - this is not the Scott we knew.“

Disgruntled! Yes, that’s all American conservatives need to hear from the White House. Nothing to see here, just a disgruntled loser. Well he IS a disgruntled loser - kind of like Josef Goebbels surviving Hitler and then trying to explain he really thought Hitler meant well. OK, maybe Goebbels is a bit of an extreme example. How about Albert Speer?

Perino said the reports on the book had been described to Bush, and that she did not expect him to comment. “He has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers,” she said.

It’s happy hour and the Rangers game is on.

The book provoked strong reactions from former staffers as well.

“For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional,” Fran Townsend, former head of the White House-based counterterrorism office, told CNN.

Translated: ‘. . .  this asshole, after all this administration did for his career, has to turn into a fucking choir boy. Fine - he gets The John Dean Award for 2008. Stupid traitorous puke.’

Said former top aide Karl Rove, in an interview with Fox News Channel, “If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them. And frankly I don’t remember him speaking up about these things. I don’t remember a single word.”

You know the crazy thing? Here Karl Rove is probably right.

McClellan called the Iraq war a “serious strategic blunder,” a surprisingly harsh assessment from the man who was at that time the loyal public voice of the White House who had followed Bush to Washington from Texas.

“The Iraq war was not necessary,” he concludes. “Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake.”

Ya think? I also was told by mommy when I was three that putting my hand on a hot stove was a bad thing too.  Please tell us something that sentient beings do not know Scottie, OK?

McClellan admits that some of his own words from the podium in the White House briefing room turned out to be “badly misguided.” But he says he was sincere at the time.

Sincerity is Linus out in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin. You Scottie were a willing tool and a fucking liar. “Badly misguided?” What they hell kind of a lame excuse is that? Why not say “I willingly drank the Kool Aid and spewed it out to the American public?”

“When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the president and unable to comment,” he said. “But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew.”

Scottie, you get the Adolf Eichmann Good German Award here but you’re still wrong. You’re first loyalty is not to the President of the United States but to the Constitution of the United States and to the people of this country. This is the ultimate act of official cowardice - you told the press that someday you’d tell the truth but when it could have really made a difference for this country, you kept quiet and allowed war crimes to take place.

Do you sleep at night Scottie?

As for the press, I noticed you blame them as well for not making you do your job:

“I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be,” McClellan writes. He also blames the media whose questions he fielded, calling them “complicit enablers” in the White House campaign to manipulate public opinion toward the need for war.

That is true but it doesn’t absolve what you did in any way.

McClellan said Bush loyalists will no doubt continue to think the administration’s decisions have been correct and its unpopularity undeserved. “I’ve become genuinely convinced otherwise,” he said.

Translated: ‘I always knew this was all bullshit but now I need the money the book will (hopefully) provide. So go on suckers, buy a copy.’

Let me make a prediction you will see in your lifetime. Perhaps next year.

This prediction is based on THIS story and the following stories:

At some point, a dwindling number of gas stations will be protected by guards armed with submachine pistols. All cars will have to stop at a distance from the station to be searched for weapons. You will pay for whatever gas you want through electronic debit or cash at the checkpoint. Then you will proceed to the pump and pump your own fuel under the watchful eye of guards.

and/or

You will have a gas ration card and sticker on your car not unlike the World War Two “A” cards. Guards at gas stations will carefully log the number of gallons you buy and cross check your card against their database.

Since most Americans read nothing outside of their own controlled media, here’s a well written run down of just what we face that our glorious President, Congress and media haven’t told us about.

London Independent

I won’t except it here - just read it. You NEED to READ this.

And remember, all the bad stuff accelerates at incredible speed if the Warmonger in Chief attacks Iran as many predict will happen by the end of the year or next January. Or some other kind of terrorist attack is launched during the transition.

Now, I have run out of any hope for the future of the world. Notice that most of the Western nations we spit on publicly as effeminate cheese-eating surrender monkeys are doing their best to encourage and require (by law) conservation and conversion measures.

Not so in our land of the “non-negotiable lifestyle.”

And for that, we are well and truly fucked and deservedly so.

And we can spend the time on the downward spiral not leading, but blaming the Chinese and the Indians for being the REAL CAUSE of the end of industrial society. That might make the Rush Limbaughs and Lou Dobbs feel better for a few months but the bottom line is, in the end, we will be left psychologically unprepared and economically undefended against what will hit us.

At that point, I guess the entire Bush Crime Family takes off for their ranch in Paraguay. The rest of us will be contending with a society tearing itself to pieces. There will be blood, oh yes, there will be blood.

Look, nothing is going to happen on the political front. Even the sainted Obama isn’t talking about any of this because he knows that to tell the American people the truth would doom his chances of winning. And the corporate boys are content to ride the economic collapse wave all the way down where they will either flee to their private islands or their armed compounds (like the Walton family has built).

The liars are leading the blind to oblivion.

So my advice to all of you is simply this: go out and blow the ranch on having a good time. Want to take a great dream vacation in your life? Take it now. Right now. Just drop everything, max up the cards and go. Seriously. We’re all going to be poor and scraping by to some degree in the future anyway so you might as well enjoy yourself now. The memories of this last great time may be all you have to keep you warm someday.

Read the article again: the writing is on the wall and there will be not be any movieland deus ex machina to stop it.

OK, if it helps, pretend some doctor told you you have inoperable cancer and have a year to live. The self-help gurus always told you you should live your life like that. Well, now you can! And with good reason.

If you feel like living beyond Armageddon, go ahead and get the basement filled with non-perishables. Buy some gas cans and, right NOW, store a few tankfuls of gas in the garage. Yes, get all the nifty guns and ammo you want now. Charge them - no one a few years ago is going to pay those balances anyway. And no one will be able to collect on them either.

Where we’re going as a nation a sterling credit record is not going to matter. Neither will all that ugly looking fiat currency you’re stuffing in your wallet or purse.

You might, just might, want to look at all the stuff you’re selling on Ebay and think about what you might get for locally in barter. Just saying.

Want it? Want it bad? Get it now. Enjoy it now, especially if no one will buy it from you later. Hell, it may even give the US economy one more dead cat bounce and make the boys on Wall Street happy enough until the end of the year.

Everything is simply going to get more expensive in the near and long term future, starting now. And in the case of things like gasoline and heating oil, they may go out of sight instantly, in the event of an attack against Iran.

And, by the way, do you think your employer is going to raise your pay to cover the sharp rising costs of living?

(rolling on the floor laughing)

As as the Independent article points out - most of your durable goods, food and medicines owe their existence to oil. As oil soars, so do all of them.

(As an aside, with so many millions of Americans brain chemistry now totally dependent on SSRI type anti-depressants, what happens when the shit hits the fan and they can’t get their drugs anymore? There won’t be nearly enough police to contain the carnage.)

Survivalism

Now that brings up another issue covered last Saturday by the Associated Press: Survivalism.

Yes, I’ve mentioned food, weapons and all of that. And the people the AP interviewed are serious about what they’re doing and preparing for.

But consider what they believe is going to happen:

“There’s going to be things that happen when people can’t get things that they need for themselves and their families,” said Lynn-Marie, who believes cities could see a rise in violence as early as 2012.

Lynn-Marie asked to be identified by her first name to protect her homestead in rural western Idaho. Many of these survivalists declined to speak to The Associated Press for similar reasons.

snip

Determined to guard themselves from potentially harsh times ahead, Lynn-Marie and her husband have already planted an orchard of about 40 trees and built a greenhouse on their 7 1/2 acres. They have built their own irrigation system. They’ve begun to raise chickens and pigs, and they’ve learned to slaughter them.

The couple have gotten rid of their TV and instead have been reading dusty old books published in their grandparents’ era, books that explain the simpler lifestyle they are trying to revive. Lynn-Marie has been teaching herself how to make soap. Her husband, concerned about one day being unable to get medications, has been training to become an herbalist.

By 2012, they expect to power their property with solar panels, and produce their own meat, milk and vegetables. When things start to fall apart, they expect their children and grandchildren will come back home and help them work the land. She envisions a day when the family may have to decide whether to turn needy people away from their door. (with what, a few kind words or an AK-47? - ed.)

“People will be unprepared,” she said. “And we can imagine marauding hordes.”

So can Peter Laskowski. Living in a woodsy area outside of Montpelier, Vt., the 57-year-old retiree has become the local constable and a deputy sheriff for his county, as well as an emergency medical technician.

“I decided there was nothing like getting the training myself to deal with insurrections, if that’s a possibility,” said the former executive recruiter.

Which brings up the next question: not so much how many American could conceivably live like that but how many would want to? Slaughtering chickens and pigs? Yechhh!!! Tending a garden by hand? No HBO? Why live?

They had a solution for this in Soylent Green.

So look, you’ve got maybe 6-8 months in the event of an attack on Iran to live it up. Without an attack, 2-3 years tops before other things happen I don’t have the time or patience to talk about here.

Now get out there and enjoy life!

Today’s Contemporary Americana!

Fox 8 Cleveland

Gotta love the graphic:

Business at the ZLB Plasma Service on Cleveland’s near west side is booming. The company pays as much as $40 per visit for a donors first four visits, less after that.  Each person donating plasma can do that no more than two times a week.

“If you are out of money and you need gas you can come here and get a little change.” said Willie Tyson of Cleveland, who also says the stipend he gets from his donation does not go very far. “I mean it takes all of it at $4.50 a gallon almost.”

This is nothing new in the Land of the Free. When I worked at a book store in Cedar Rapids, despite the gold plated health insurance, co-workers were regulars at the local plasma clinic. You can’t pay rent with health insurance.

Now people are selling their blood plasma to pay for gasoline. Hmmm, there’s some kind of weird symbolism at work here, wouldn’t you say?

And yes, I’ve thought of it too.

George W. Bush’s ‘have mores’ don’t have to think about it, of course.

And again, I find it interesting in this country that it’s OK to sell your precious bodily fluids but you better not let ‘law enforcement’ find you selling OTHER precious bodily fluids (through sex) on the open market, i.e. prostitution.

See capitalism forces the ‘losers’ to do desperate things in desperate times and always has. Check out Zinn and any other honest history of this country - prostitution was rampant in Victorian America - land of the 12 hour factory/sweatshop. Again, you were free - to starve.

Now filling your tank may not seem too critical at this juncture, except that people do need to get to work and to the market. And consider that because of the price of gas, everything else, especially food, is going up as well. The media isn’t reporting the full extent of the growing desperation out there. Blood for plasma is just the start. Wait until winter comes and the shock of natural gas price spikes hit the elderly on fixed incomes.

A hard rain’s gonna fall in America. And this is just the overture.

From Think Progress

And be sure to read the comments, some of them are excellent.

So, on May 10th at the Emmy Awards dinner, I quietly passed out a document that contained – not my opinion – but O’Reilly’s own words and quotes from his sexual harassment lawsuit. And that is what got me fired. I got fired from my job on a news and information network for reporting demonstrably true things in a room full of news people.

Normally, in the great scheme of things – this should be a total non-story. “Overpaid White Guy Gets Fired from Cushy Job for Shooting Mouth Off.” Yawn. But these are not normal times. After the word got out that I was fired – I started hearing from people from all over the country who were outraged. A guy in Texas who had once worked with O’Reilly and had seen a meltdown like the one on Youtube – a weather anchor in Arizona – a woman in China no less.

And it all got me to thinking about the myth of free speech. In today’s America, speech is only “free” when you are talking down to someone less powerful that you. Speak “up” – and look out.

In your work life, they can fire you, as I found out, for quietly saying something that is widely known to be true. Put a lid on it.

And in our role as citizens, we have been told by O’Reilly to shut up, or Fox Security may pay you a visit. We are called traitors if we simply speak the truth about the absence of WMD’s – the way the war is going – the disgraces of Abu Ghraib, of Gitmo, of waterboarding. Shut up.

So, when exactly do they think we have the right to speak up? To speak the quiet simple truth, to people who have more power than us?

As long as the “only the employer can decide” mindset rules America, the First Amendment is nothing but an empty shell in this “Land of the Free.”

I would also tell people that these firings and forcing-outs are nothing new and have been happening for some time. I’m one of the victims thanks to the ‘free-speech champions’ at the Cedar Rapids Gazette and WJBC AM in Bloomington. Whether you protest Bill O’Reilly or Ann Coulter or the invasion of Iraq, the long knives will be out for you - to destroy your ability to make a living in what you love. Land of the free my ass.

And the American people generally have no clue about how the so-called ‘liberal media’ has been purged of anyone who doesn’t toe the pro-war, pro-thug, pro-capitalist line. Most of them don’t care.

I have a neighbor here who believes everything he hears on Fox News. He and his wife were over for Memorial Day and I literally had to grind my teeth into powder not to tear him a new one over his stupidity. But he and his wife have been friends of my mother for 40 years so what can I do?

People choose to be stupid in America. And then they choose to be proud of it. Amazing.

Meanwhile I hope that Nolan doesn’t need to do lawn work or car detailing to earn the right to eat in America. Let’s hope he’s not forever blacklisted as happens in the American media.

Recent interview with Will Mari on Huffpo

Speaking of The Huffington Post, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to take the way they censor comments. You ever notice that some comments get posted immediately while some, probably containing key words and phrases that make the mods pee their pants, get withheld for approval?

Yeah, they can do what they want. But I’m not sure I want to link or post there anymore. They seem to have an advance case of the yips when in comes to subjects like martial law and a proper response to it. if people can go on Fox News and glibly talk about assassination than at least a comment on what those same people might do to curtail the rest of our civil liberties and a proper response to that should at least get a fair hearing in Huffpo.

Anyway, here’s Mike Huckabee talking about his book and waxing philosophic about Republican politics and the American mind, such as it is:

Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it’s this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it’s a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says “look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don’t get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it.” Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it’s not an American message. It doesn’t fly. People aren’t going to buy that, because that’s not the way we are as a people. That’s not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it’s just there to be as little of it as there can be. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for.

If you have a breakdown in the social structure of a community, it’s going to result in a more costly government … police on the streets, prison beds, court costs, alcohol abuse centers, domestic violence shelters, all are very expensive. What’s the answer to that? Cut them out? Well, the libertarians say “yes, we shouldn’t be funding that stuff.” But what you’ve done then is exacerbate a serious problem in your community. You can take the cops off the streets and just quit funding prison beds. Are your neighborhoods safer? Is it a better place to live? The net result is you have now a bigger problem than you had before.

My experience in Arkansas was, a lot of the so-called conservatives said “Let’s cut the budget.” But they wanted to add prison sentences, they wanted to eliminate parole, they wanted to have harsher sentences for various crimes. And I said “OK, that’s fine, but that’s going to be expensive. So which do you want?” You can’t have both, or you do what the federal government has done, and this is where I think Republicans have been especially irresponsible. Their approach has been [to] just kick the can down the road and let your grandkids pay for it.

So they run up huge deficits … but they’ve pushed those costs down to the states, and the states have to eat it, because they have to balance their budgets, they don’t get to print money or borrow. Or the federal government just runs up more deficits and let’s the next couple of generations worry about paying for all this stuff.

Either way, it’s irresponsible, and I think people in America are smarter than that and they know that’s not the responsible way to approach governing.

Alright, so Mike Huckabee thinks he can don the mantle of the holy and somehow convince garden variety Republicans that they should swallow tax increases for social programs?

Mike, Mike, you give your side too much credit.

You know what the vast majority of conservatives in this country think of the poor: screw ‘em, it’s their own damn fault and I’d rather have my tax money buying nifty bombs to kill the sand ni%%%rs in Iraq than enabling the morally deficient losers in our society.

Good luck with that Mike. You should know your own people by now. And no, trying to convince them with a cost-benefit analysis isn’t going to work either. These people will gladly spend whatever it takes to support their own causes- war and greed - but begrudge every penny spent on education, social programs or the welfare of people they think are beneath them.

When Huckabee says: look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don’t get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it.” Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it’s not an American message. It doesn’t fly.

he’s wrong: it DOES fly with millions of Americans. The same people who have no problem walking over (or on) the homeless to get to their jobs every day in this country. And their attitude with education and health care is that they take care of their own and everyone else can go pound salt.

I mean, what kind of cloud cuckoo-land Republican Party does Mike Huckabee reside in anyway?

Still, I like the fact that he’s at least trying to make this case. Perhaps he feels it’s what Jesus would do. The same Jesus that the Republicans always quote saying “the poor you will always have with you” so screw ‘em and build more Raptor jet fighters.

And it isn’t some bizarre form of libertarianism driving the train either. This ethos comes right from Corporate America: it’s what they want. And they compose the power base of both of America’s Punch and Judy political parties. And Corporate America brainwashes and blackmails average Americans into accepting this Faustian bargain. Until their power is laid low, nothing will change.

For example, check out this entry in Joe Bageant’s blog about a group of peaceful activists trying to save the mountains in West Virginia from rapacious strip mining which levels those mountains. They are intercepted by a bunch of ignorant thugs, sent their by the mining companies on pain of unemployment, to disrupt the ceremony.

Read the things these ignorant troglodytes say. And no, I don’t believe we can ever reach them or convince them otherwise - the brainwashing is too deep.

It’s the same kind of right wing thug mentality where idiot biker groups like Rolling Thunder, who kissed George W. Bush’s rectum this Memorial Day weekend, disrupt anti-war vigils put on by peaceful groups like the Quakers - who have been under surveillance by Der Fatherland Security since after 9-11.

And THESE PEOPLE are the ones the Karl Roves need to keep in the Republican Party to keep them in power - NOT the kind of pie in the sky what-would-Jesus-do crap emanating from Mike Huckabee.

He’s trying to ride herd over a party carried by fascists.

Great must read article from David Glenn Cox linked from Democratic Underground

Like any panic, the root causes are always disputed; heroes are vilified and villains deified. Some say the root cause is the ever-expanding, worldwide demand for oil, exacerbated by the emerging economic tigers India and China. Others point to oil traders’ and speculators’ involvement, and even the traders themselves find they are torn by their allegiances. CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera took umbrage at a Congressman for describing oil company profits as obscene. Explaining that most of their viewers are investors and view profits as a deserved expectation, “What then, Congressman, makes profits obscene?” she asked. “What makes profit obscene?”

Pick your poison; let the fuel costs kill you or raise fares until the public stops flying. But the airlines are the canary in the coal mine for the trucking companies, food processors, freight haulers and producers of raw materials. A factory that I used to order from gave us free freight on orders over ten thousand dollars. That deal is now out the window. With freight rates up 40%, the ten thousand-dollar order wouldn’t cover their own freight costs. That, in turn, lowers margins and encourages dealers to order only as needed.

Cox gets to the meat of the issue - when you destroy a nation’s currency, as the Bush administration has done in just one of their its acts of treason, this is what you get - rampant inflation from oil to cheetos.

Wind that up with peak oil and rampant market speculation and you get what we’re seeing now.

In a previous post, I wondered aloud how could that which those of us who watched peak oil, be happening this fast? When you factor in what Cox has here, the picture gets clearer.

But as long as we beat the tired drums of free market capitalism and globalism we are dooming ourselves to seeing real starvation, want and seniors dying in frozen homes NEXT WINTER.

I would love seeing someone like Caruso-Cabrera have to live like an ordinary American middle class person next winter. Of course, she won’t. Failing that, a mob storming her studio in the middle of a broadcast might be fitting punishment. Why do you think most TV stations have more security surrounding them than banks?

Truth be told, when we finally get down to the bottom of this mess, there will be a whole host of capitalists who should be consigned to a new form of Devil’s Island. We can start with Bush, who, has done more damage to this country than any enemy of the US could have ever dreamed of. But the whole neocon cabal needs to meet rough justice as well.

If this sounds like strong stuff, again, wait until next winter. This is merely the prologue. You haven’t seen real suffering yet. And when you do, remember who was president the last 8 years. You’ll have plenty of time to remember.

If I were to make any suggestions to people here I would continue to hoard non-perishable foods. If you can, buy gold or silver. Start getting used to walking or biking places when you can. Cut out all unnecessary diversions. If you must see friends and relatives in distant places, do it soon - very soon. It will hurt but by the end of the year traveling more than 50 miles in a car for anything other than life giving essentials may be seen as unthinkable for average people.

And I would start thinking about the unthinkable - your own personal protection. Yes, that means a gun. And for heaven’s sakes learn how to use it.

I have noticed lately a number of people filling multiple gas cans. Probably a good idea as well. But be careful of how you store it. A tankful of gas isn’t worth losing your garage or home in a fire.

Isn’t it amazing we’ve come to this?