Bad American

The speech (the meat of the issue starts around the 13 minute mark and hits it at the 17 minute mark):

When it comes to Barack Obama, I’m not merely disappointed anymore. Now I’m scared.

From Paul Joseph Watson in Infowars

Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has called for a “civilian national security force” as powerful as the U.S. military, comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but compared by one journalist to the Nazi Hitler Youth.

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” Obama told a Colorado Springs audience earlier this month.

Hmm. Now I don’t tend to stop at one source when I see something as shockingly provocative as this.

So I found this in the usually reliable Federal Times. Apparently the idea wasn’t Obama’s but Robert Gates’ which might explain why Obama is toying with the idea of keeping him on in his administration:

Three from Huffpo today all trying desperately to justify Barack Obama’s turning his back on the Constitution and civil liberties in the FISA bill.

First from Obama himself. If nothing else, this screed shows that Barack is a master of manipulative spin. At least we won’t have to listen to the stuttering, half-drunken, illiterate nonsense from George W. Bush. Now we have a master of oratory and rhetoric to spin a web of bullshit upon us:

This was not an easy call for me.

Actually it was. To explain it, in another HuffPo essay, is Dawn Teo:

The real quandary for Obama is that he has to win the “low-information voters” in November in order to win the election, but he needs the “high-information voters” now in order to field his grassroots operations leading up to November. Low-information voters are never going to understand FISA. It is a subject that takes time and energy to master. Low-information voters look at FISA and only see the ability or inability of the government to investigate potential terrorists. Yet a large number of high-information voters in both the left and right wing of politics understand that this is much more than an issue about national security — it’s an issue of balancing national security and individual rights. At the same time, most low-information voters only understand that FISA relates to national security. In other words, low-information voters are susceptible to fear mongering on this issue.

and to drive the point home (Teo again):

Because Obama needs to win low information voters in November, and many of them will be fooled by scare mongering from the right, many are interpreting the strategy as a short term sacrifice for a long term gain — Obama sacrifices the FISA vote today to save us from a McCain-picked SCOTUS tomorrow that would uphold the FISA vote.

Let’s cut through Teo’s bullshit, OK?

What she’s really saying, in the nicest possible way, is that too many American voters are morons. And Obama, to rule a nation of morons, must win the moron vote.

This begs the question of why anyone would want to either rule or live in a nation of morons? Or, the other question, is, if they are morons that must be deceived into voting for you, how do you educate these same morons once in office? And the morons still will vote and still will be susceptible to moronic appeals from the morons on the right.

No one calls Teo or any of these people on the basic premise of their arguments - the swing electorate of this once great nation are made up of morons.

It’s enough to make any thinking person think of emigrating.

So the decision, for Obama, was not difficult at all. Now that he suckered the progressive base in his own party with crap about ‘change’ and ‘hope,’ to win the national election, he has to massage the idiocy of the moron electorate that he will keep their children safe from big bad terrorists Arabs that lurk beyond the suburban persimmon bushes, waiting to slit their throats.

When you strip away the bullshit rhetoric, this is the basic truth of American politics.

As for McCain, he already has a good chunk of the moron vote locked up including the racist vote, the sexist vote, the militarist vote, the greed vote and the fascist vote. That’s a pretty good core winning coalition in America so don’t dare count him out.

Basically, what Teo is saying is that Obama would have to EXPLAIN the FISA bill to morons who don’t have above a sixth grade comprehension. To get an idea of how his handlers feel that would go, imagine Obama having to explain why the FISA compromise is unconstitutional and fascist to, say, Homer Simpson.

You have 10 seconds.

Homer: BORE-ING!!!

Now this is a surrenderist position, let’s be very clear on that. What we have is the Democratic nominee in waiting and his political advisers basically throwing in the towel on speaking to the rational, educated, electorate. Because there are not enough of them out there to form a winning majority.

Sadly this is nothing new.

Supporter: “Senator all the right thinking people are with you.”

Adlai Stevenson: “Thank you, but I need a majority to win.”

And from this George Will column on Obama from April 15:

When another supporter told Stevenson, “You educated the people through your campaign,” Stevenson replied, “But a lot of people flunked the course.” Michael Barone, in “Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan,” wrote: “It is unthinkable that Roosevelt would ever have said those things or that such thoughts ever would have crossed his mind.” Barone added: “Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture — the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting.”

Abstract standard? Meaning, what, precisely - intelligence? Rationality? The ability to employ critical thinking?

“A republic, if you can keep it,” - Benjamin Franklin, a leading intellectual of his day, often revered in American textbooks.

How do we keep this republic, if, like Barone and Will, we celebrate the idiocy of the average American? And  not just celebrate it, in Obama’s case (and he’s certainly not the only one), actually cater to it?

I haven’t the foggiest, but it scares the hell out of me.

This is why I changed the title of this post from “Sorry Barack, You Blew It” to what I did. There is simply no longer any higher standard to hold politicians to in this country. Perhaps this is not a profound revelation. It saddens and sickens me, but then again, I am an American misfit. I am one of those people who go around this nation of ours feeling that I must be mad - that I must have been dropped here as some kind of alien baby from another planet. Surely these people can see the madness of their system?

No, most of them do not.

In fact they celebrate it.

I have gone far afield in this post, I know.

Back to Obama:

I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn’t have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush’s abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration’s program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That’s why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

Guaran-damn-tee you it won’t happen. These are pretty words from a candidate who only scant weeks ago swore up and down he wouldn’t support retroactive immunity.

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year. The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I’ve said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility.

Say Barack, who has oversight of the FISA court and it’s decisions? Did you know that:

It is also rare for FISA warrant requests to be turned down by the court. Through the end of 2004, 18,761 warrants were granted, while just five were rejected (many sources say four). Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004.

and

Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the FISC is a “secret court”: its hearings are closed to the public, and, while records of the proceedings are kept, those records are also not available to the public. (Copies of those records with classified information redacted can and have been made public.) Due to the classified nature of its proceedings, only government attorneys are usually permitted to appear before the FISC. Due to the nature of the matters heard before it, FISC hearings may need to take place at any time of day or night, weekdays or weekends; thus, at least one judge must be “on call” at all times to hear evidence and decide whether or not to issue a warrant.

Pardon me if I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy for a secret court made up of government appointed sympathizers acting like a rubber stamp for the President. This is not oversight.

Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I’ve chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention — once I’m sworn in as president — to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

If you had any pretense to LEADERSHIP Senator Obama, you could have worked to kill or table the bill until you became President and then helped author a new one. This is a cop out and you know it. And I will scrape together any amount of money in a wager that Obama’s AG will indeed conduct a cursory review of all the surveillance programs and do exactly nothing. Obama will then have that power at his disposal.

What follows is four paragraphs of agonizingly patronizing bullshit from Obama. I will translate Obama-ese into understandable English.

Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I’m happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. For the truth is that your organizing, your activism and your passion is an important reason why this bill is better than previous versions.

Translation: why are you blaming me when you, the activists, are responsible for this ‘better’ bill?

No tool has been more important in focusing peoples’ attention on the abuses of executive power in this administration than the active and sustained engagement of American citizens. That holds true — not just on wiretapping, but on a range of issues where Washington has let the American people down.

Translation: too bad the effective range of all that engagement has been ‘zero.’ But hey, isn’t citizen participation great? Let’s all give it a big hand!

I learned long ago, when working as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago, that when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I’m not exempt from that. I’m certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too. I cannot promise to agree with you on every issue. But I do promise to listen to your concerns, take them seriously, and seek to earn your ongoing support to change the country.

Translation: remember people that ‘listening’ and actually being made to do what you want are two entirely different things. Hell, I’ll always listen. . . and then probably ignore what I don’t like. By the way, have you noticed how much George W. Bush has been “held accountable?” Especially by the leaders of my party? Wow, ‘accountability’ is a pretty word, isn’t it? Just keep paying your taxes and not burning anything down or fucking up commerce like they do in other countries and we’ll humor you with all the pretty words you want to hear.

Like these:

That is why we have built the largest grassroots campaign in the history of presidential politics, and that is the kind of White House that I intend to run as president of the United States — a White House that takes the Constitution seriously, conducts the peoples’ business out in the open, welcomes and listens to dissenting views, and asks you to play your part in shaping our country’s destiny.

Wow. I’m literally tearing up.

Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker. That’s ok.

Translation: That’s the nicest ‘fuck you’ you’ll ever get from a candidate. I mean, where I cut my teeth in politics they would simply say, like Mayor Richard Daley: ‘fuck you, I own this city and can do whatever I damn well want with or without your support.’ But, see how we’ve grown and changed since then? We’re kindler and gentler in our approach now. Why, we speak so pretty now, you don’t even realize that you’ve been dissed and dismissed as one might say. That’s statesmanship!

But I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have. After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer. Whether it is the economy, foreign policy, or the Supreme Court, my opponent has embraced the failed course of the last eight years, while I want to take this country in a new direction. Make no mistake: if John McCain is elected, the fundamental direction of this country that we love will not change. But if we come together, we have an historic opportunity to chart a new course, a better course.

Translation: who else you gonna vote for, suckers? Ralph Nader? Ha, ha ha.

So I appreciate the feedback through my.barackobama.com, and I look forward to continuing the conversation in the months and years to come. Together, we have a lot of work to do.

Translation: that’s the last I’m going to comment on this matter to you netroots nutcases. You have your marching orders and nowhere else to turn. Now shut up and do what I tell you to do.

If you want to read more wishful thinking on Barack Obama, you can read Bob Cesca’s plaintive bleating here.

The bottom line for me is that there are a lot of people who are clinging to the hope of Obama like survivors clinging to the hull of a capsized ship. On this 4th of July we make a lot of pretty speeches about the often sanitized history of our country and express all kinds of patriotic platitudes that the best is yet to come.

In that way we live off hope. I remember as a child living off that hope when Jimmy Carter was elected. Now we would sweep away all the nasties of the Nixon years and have good clean government that would really serve the people. And we would never get involved in another Vietnam War ever again.

We may be running out of oil, natural gas, potable groundwater, decent jobs and a stable currency in this country but the one thing we’ve always had an inexhaustible supply of is hope. And would I be profoundly cynical to suggest that Senator Obama played that last great American trait like a well tuned guitar?

We’re like the dog whose sadistic owner keeps holding the doggie treat just out of reach. We keep jumping and jumping while our political (and economic) system drops the bacon just a little bit and we jump again thinking that this time, this time, it’s just low enough to grab it. But it’s jerked away again.

I’m tired of jumping every time some flavor of the election cycle promises me a better America. I don’t believe any of it anymore. At 45, I’ve been lied to my entire life and I’m sick and tired of it. I don’t believe in any of it anymore.

Barack Obama is no savior. There aren’t any more political saviors and you know damn well why. As long as our government and its’ players can be bought by our corporate masters they will be bought and they will work for them, not us. And as long as the majority of the American people are deliberately mis-educated about the history of their own country and it’s economic and political systems, they will get away with it.

My greatest fear is that the vast majority of us are losing our usefulness to the system. We’re almost out of industrial jobs - they’re overseas. Agribusiness doesn’t need or want family farmers any more. We can’t all sell each other insurance and hamburgers without money to buy them. There are only two major industries in this country that are growing and one can make a living in - war and prisons.

Barack Obama doesn’t talk about any of that. He doesn’t speak for the people who used to make things that made this nation - steel, rubber, glass - and now are unable to provide for their families. He doesn’t talk about the people that have been ripped off by the system - he has no real effective plan for the people affected by foreclosures.

Barack Obama is not speaking to what Franklin Roosevelt called “the forgotten man (or woman).” He really isn’t.

But people believe that the man who says such pretty things will somehow, magically, turn into FDR once he raises his right hand and takes the oath.

Now George W. Bush and his flying monkeys are about to shoot the works in the last six months of his administration to fuck up the country so bad no one can undo it. Such as destroying the presumption of innocence in pursuing investigations of terrorism.

So what can one expect of Barack Obama, really?

The next President has a choice - he can either embrace all the powers of an authoritarian system that George W. Bush is seemingly putting the finishing touches to OR he can begin dismantling that system and turn away from dictatorship and empire.

And if we are to judge what a man and a leader will do to get the highest office in the land, I can’t have any hope that Obama will choose the latter path.

Sorry, I’m out of hope.

Good comment from Matthew Rothschild in The Progressive

Obama said it “firmly reestablishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance.”

But the ACLU notes that the bill “permits only minimal court oversight. The FISA Court only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what, or where will actually be tapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment.”

What’s more, in the incredibly rare instances where the FISA Court denies a warrant to the President, under the new bill the President can go ahead and do the wiretapping anyway while the appeals process continues, a process that the ACLU says can take two months.

Russ Feingold calls the idea that this is a good compromise “a farce” and “political cover.”

Says Feingold: “Anybody who claims this is an OK bill, I really question if they’ve even read it.”

Has Obama?

If not, that’s a problem.

And if he has, and still approves of it, that’s an even bigger one.

Glenn Greenwald in Salon:

It’s either that he “chickened out” or — as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin asserts and Digby wonders — Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he’ll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives — and I don’t know (or much care) what they are — Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush’s executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of “Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights.” Note that the very first line of Obama’s statement warns us that we face what he calls “grave threats,” and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good. Making matters worse still, what Obama did yesterday is in clear tension with an emphatic promise that he made just months ago. As the extremely pro-Obama MoveOn.org notes today, Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, back in in September, vowed that Obama would “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.” MoveOn believes Obama should be held to his word and is thus conducting a campaign urging Obama to do what he promised — support a filibuster to stop the enactment of telecom amnesty.

And here from MS Bellows in HuffPo: Obama: In the Inspector General We Trust:

Dennis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, said in a conference call this morning that legislation expanding presidential power to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications is acceptable to Senator Obama because the United States Inspector General will ensure accountability.

In other words, the Obama campaign’s position is now that the duty and power to protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, now resides primarily not with the President, not with the Congress or the Courts, but with a bureaucrat created by administrative law whose job is to conduct internal investigations of government agencies.

What I find particularly distressing is that there are, apparently smart people who are so emotionally invested in Obama as the black JFK that they are overlooking this rape of the Constitution.

Like this commenter from Huffpo:

pdohan See Profile I’m a Fan of pdohan

I’m voting Green or Socialist Worker in November. I can’t, in good conscience, vote for this pack of jackals or their puppet Obama. And speaking of him, has anyone heard a word from Lord Barack on the telecom immunity isssue?

Huffpo: Congress Strikes Immunity Deal for Telecoms

Yesterday House Democrats and Republicans effectively struck a deal to “provide what amounts to legal immunity to the phone companies that took part in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping.” Today the parties will vote on the compromise bill. The New York Times has details below on the compromise. The AP will have updates of the voting here.

Remember, it’s the best Congress money can buy:

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald posted the amount of money each of the major telecoms involved spent on lobbyists to curry a favorable outcome for this legislation. Read an excerpt below:

Just in the first three months of 2008, recent lobbyist disclosure statements reveal that AT&T spent $5.2 million in lobbyist fees (putting it well ahead of its 2007 pace, when it spent just over $17 million). In the first quarter of 2008, Verizon spent $4.8 million on lobbyist fees, while Comcast spent $2.6 million. So in the first three months of this year, those three telecoms — which would be among the biggest beneficiaries of telecom amnesty (right after the White House) — spent a combined total of almost $13 million on lobbyists. They’re on pace to spend more than $50 million on lobbying this year — just those three companies.

Why? Marty Kaplan sums it up in HuffPo:

The Democrats’ motive, of course, is mixed; one part fear of losing telecom campaign contributions, one part fear of being called terrorist-lovers, appeasers and similar bad names by Republican crooks, liars and smear-merchants in the coming campaign. The irony, of course, is that even though Democrats gave Bush and Cheney the very barebacking they wanted, the Republicans are already calling Democrats, and will continue to call them in the fall, America-haters, while the phone companies, having nowhere else to go to rent a congressional majority, would have continued to fatten Democratic coffers anyway.

snip

Makes you wonder how far the Democrats are willing to go to win the love of the loathed playground bullies. Let Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship? Make bipartisan loviedovie with Newt Gingrich? Take impeachment off the table? Oh, wait.

There is also loose talk that has been going on for some years that a great deal of the ‘eavesdropping’ and investigations done by the Bush/Cheney spooks were done on Democratic Congressman who are being blackmailed in one form or another to do the bidding of the military-industrial complex.

Face it people: under the two-party Punch and Judy show, you’re powerless.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m tired of being played for a sucker by the American political system. I’m 45 and I’ve been listening to the bullshit all my life and I no longer believe any change through the ballot box is possible. The only way they will break is under force and too many Americans long ago had any revolutionary spirit beat out of them. Perhaps when their children are starving or seized by forced conscription. Perhaps.

In any case, what we are seeing are the final shrieks of government of, by and for the people which, if you study enough serious American history, was more of a myth than a reality anyway.

What is coming down the pike is nothing more than red, white and blue fascism. All it will take is one more ‘terrorist attack’ to complete the long sought after mission of the authoritarians. And, as long as people like this are promised a piece of the face smashing fun, you’ll find many Americans cheering the death of the republic (they’re doing it now anyway on sites like Free Republic) and the ’setting accounts’ with ‘lib’ruls’ that will follow in it’s wake.

Read Joe Bageant’s latest articles if you need more background. He’s in Belize now which should tell you a lot about the smart people with means getting out now while the getting is good.

It’s everywhere else (and on Olbermann) so you might as well see it here:

I’d feel a lot better about this if I didn’t have the distinct impression that Obama and the Democrats won’t deliver on any of these issues either - especially the war in Iraq and health care.

UPDATE: Some very good commentary on Alternet from this post about Democrats who drive limousines and big cars while mouthing green platitudes:

like alcoholism or returning again & again to an abusive spouse who repeatedly lies to you. It’s easy to fall off the wagon, to make excuses & rationalizations for it.

As long as a large chunk of voters can be deceived by the seemingly “nicer guy” act of the Democrats, there is no hope whatever of coming to grips with the core problems of our society. The most dangerous trends — a wasteful consumer society, environmental destruction, grotesque social inequality, and an uncontrollable propaganda/war machine — cannot even be approached within the framework of bourgeois politics, because they all serve ruling class interests. This is what is really being protected, when people opt to support Democrats just because they seem less blatantly cruel on TV.

The Democrats are just a faction of the enemy — not allies in any sense. They are not the “lesser evil;” they are an auxiliary subdivision of the same evil. They have betrayed us beyond all possible reconciliation, and are more truly allies of the Republicans than they are “friends” of ours.

Both parties represent little more than the will of giant oil, banking, media and defense corporations. The only way they differ is in marketing strategies, target populations, rhetorical style, & external fluff.

I highlighted the part in blue because I saw on the morning news shows today that the Denver police are getting extra training in torturing people with pepper spray in advance of the Democratic National Committee convention.

America you make me so proud.

BIG TIP of the hat this morning to the fine folks at Plunderbund who landed up getting linked to Pandagon on this issue.

This is what we’re talking about folks:

Yes, it is what you think it is.

From Joseph’s post on Plunderbund:

I still haven’t heard back from the company actually selling the toys, so I did a little research.

It turns out that THESOCKOBAMA CO., LLC is registered in Utah as a Limited Liability Company.

Ladies and Gentlemen (sit down John), here’s Carol McCain.

Oh no, this just wouldn’t fly. . .

The original store in the (UK) Daily Mail

The pick up on HuffPo

I can’t for the life of me understand the HuffPo readers who say this is not a campaign issue. Do they think for a moment if Barack Obama treated his first wife this shabbily that the Limbaughs of the world wouldn’t be making a continuing huge story about it? Of course they would!

You see, this is the so-called ‘party of family values’ or so they like to tell us. But this scumbag is the man they are running for POTUS.

You know, it’s really a tossup in the Republican/reptilian scheme of things which was the bigger asshole - McCain or Newt Gingrich who had his wife presented with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery.

But ‘real men’ Republicans understand the need for a ‘trophy wife’ if one is to aspire for higher nationwide audience. A cancer survivor and a cripple simply couldn’t be sold to middle-Americans, many of whom still view infirmity as a punishment from God.

No, what is needed is arm candy like Cindy McCain. And hey, did it hurt that she was fantastically wealthy and helped greased the skids for McCain’s political ambitions? Of course not - in the conservative Republican world it doesn’t matter how you got the money - only that you got it.

And of course, for all of McCain’s war hero buddies, the ones that like to liquor themselves up before they go out hunting tail(hook), who needs a cripple when you’re a handsome, virile war hero? So many women would jump your bones why stick with the woman who waited for you all those years?

It’s like the end of Catch 22 when Yossarian is made to understand that the privileged are not like you and me (after Captain Nately died ‘in the service’ of uber-capitalist Milo Minderbinder’s M&M Enterprises):

1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.
Yossarian: What difference does that make? He’s dead.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his family will get it.
Yossarian: He didn’t have time to have a family.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his parents will get it.
Yossarian: They don’t need it, they’re rich.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then they’ll understand .

And so the conservatives will understand that McCain had to do what he had to do to get where he is. Sometimes people have to be jettisoned, even if they are your wife, for the sake of the mission.

Because as Milo Minderbinder said, even Carol McCain seems to instinctively understand - nothing personal here, just business.

Normally this would all be wild rumor and speculation but there may be a definite reason that Hillary Clinton maddeningly keeps her options open.

If Bob Beckel is worried about this, Obama supporters should be too - view Beckel on Fox here.

And here is more speculation on Free Republic.

The Black and Right blog linked by the Freepers

And the Hillbuzz blog

The Michelle Obama Rant Tape was filmed between June 26th - July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church: specifically the Women’s Event.

This outburst happened just one month before the 2004 Democratic Convention, when Barack Obama delivered the keynote address.

From Katy Grimes at Townhall:

Chris Hedges’ May 28 speech at Furman from Alternet.

Read the whole thing. It’s brilliant and depressing as well.

I no longer believe the American people will wake up or are capable of waking up. Too many people, especially the right wingers, are gleefully being told who to hate next and they thrive on that. This country now has a whole host of Muslim/brown skinned peoples to hate and the government will dutifully rotate them lest we get to bored hating the Iraqis we can hate the Iranians. Maybe next the Syrians. Somewhere out there, there’s the ‘next Hitler’ waiting to be marketed to the hopelessly stupid for the benefit of the military-corporate state.

If you want to see how the brainwashing works on ground level, go see the movie “Ironman” and watch the reactions of the people around you - almost all of whom are unaware of the level of mental conditioning they’ve just become subjected to.

For those cheering at the end of “Ironman” consider what Hedges writes here:

Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The U.S. has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions on the planet. The defense budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since the Second World War even as we have more than $400 billion in annual deficits. More than half of federal discretionary spending goes to defense. This will not end when Bush leaves office. And so we build Cold War relics like $3.4 billion submarines and stealth fighters to evade radar systems the Soviets never built and spend $ 8.9 billion on ICBM missile defense that will be useless in stopping a shipping container concealing a dirty bomb. The defense industry is able to monopolize the best scientific and research talent and squander the nation’s resources and investment capital. These defense industries produce nothing that is useful for society or the national trade account. (Seymour) Melman, like President Eisenhower, saw the defense industry as viral, something that, as it grew, destroyed a healthy economy. And so we produce sophisticated fighter jets while Boeing is unable to finish its new commercial plane on schedule, and our automotive industry tanks. We sink money into research and development of weapons systems and starve technologies to fight against global warming and renewable energy. Universities are awash in defense-related cash and grants, and struggle to find money for environmental studies. This massive military spending, aided by this $3 trillion war, is hollowing us out from the inside. Our bridges and levees collapse, our schools decay, and our safety net is taken away.

And there are people out there on the right, who will tell you how proud they are of this. Sheer freakin’ madness (I’ve resolved to try to moderate my language on this blog). But there are those who believe that the denial of health care benefits is necessary to trim the herd - to separate America’s winners from the hopeless losers. By culling the herd, these people believe (but will never say out loud except to like-minded friends), it will make the residual population stronger.

And many of these people call themselves Christians, go to church and tell Jesus how much they love him every Sunday.

Here’s something I didn’t know (from Hedges):

The FCC, in an example of how far our standards have fallen, defines shows like Fox’s celebrity gossip program “TMZ” and the Christian Broadcast Network’s “700 Club” as “bona fide newscasts.” The economist Charlotte Twight calls this vast corporate system of spectacle and democratic collapse “participatory fascism.“

Brilliant! I like that - participatory fascism. Absolutely correct. Wrap it in a flag and cross and sell it, sell it, sell it.

Hedges again:

How did we get here? How did this happen? In a word, deregulation — the systematic dismantling of the managed capitalism that was the hallmark of the American democratic state. Our political decline came about because of deregulation, the repeal of antitrust laws, and the radical transformation from a manufacturing economy to a capital economy.

Well, yes and no. Can a democratic people remain free under capitalism? Hedges would say as long as capitalism is strictly regulated. One of our founding fathers said that the minute the people understood they could vote themselves the largess of the nation, democracy was finished. In a corollary, as soon as the capitalists became wealthy enough to buy the government wholesale, democracy died anyway.

The point being that as long as politicians need corporate money to run for office AND accept other fabulous perks from Corporate America, they will be servants of the corporations and no free state is possible.

Therefore, regulation is a fool’s errand in the long run. It will always fail as soon as a buyout point is reached for a legislature. It is simply human nature.

Does Hedges offer some possible mechanism for reversing this trend? A little later in the piece he goes on about lobbying to repeal Taft-Hartley blah blah blah. How do you lobby a legislature that no longer hears you or wants to hear you? How do fight for democracy in a system where the entire game is rigged - throw one set of rascals out and Corporate America puts another set of rascals up to take their place.

So in essence Hedges isn’t saying anything useful. The reason he doesn’t is because he knows that things have gone too far in this country and that only by another violent revolution in this country is there a possibility to break the hold of the corporate state. And some things cannot be uttered in public. And truth be told, Hedges probably has come to the conclusion that the American people are no longer capable of emulating their founding fathers and he is probably correct.

Hedges:

I spent two years traveling the country to write a book on the Christian right called “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” In depressed former manufacturing towns from Ohio to Kentucky it was the same. There are tens of millions of Americans for whom the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. They have lost hope. Fear and instability has plunged the working class into personal and economic despair, and not surprisingly into the arms of the demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian right who offer a belief in magic, miracles and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. And unless we re-enfranchise these Americans back into the economy, unless we give them hope, our democracy is doomed.

And that simply isn’t going to happen and Hedges know it deep inside. The groundwork was lain many decades prior by the gutting of a classical liberal arts education in our public schools, especially in the teaching of free social and historical inquiry. As long as the Gablers were calling the shots on textbooks in Texas and the US, miseducation was the model. Now the vast majority of Americans are so ignorant of their own history, that any such re-education is virtually impossible.

When the US had the luxury of our bounty of raw materials and know-how, a vast and prosperous middle class was possible. In real historical terms, this period has been merely an eyeblink. We are now rapidly heading back to the economic system of the late 19th century. The problem with that is there are simply too many people and too few jobs and hopes. Hedges senses what is coming:

As the pressure mounts, as this despair and desperation reaches into larger and larger segments of the American populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to prevent civil unrest and instability. It is not accidental that with the rise of the corporate state comes the rise of the security state. This is why the Bush White House has pushed through the Patriot Act (and its renewal), the suspension of habeas corpus, the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” the warrantless wiretapping on American citizens and the refusal to ensure free and fair elections with verifiable ballot-counting. It is part of a package. It comes together. It is not about terrorism or national security. It is about control. It is about their control of us.

Well if you’re going to lose your job with the New York Times you might as well tell the truth at some point. And that is the truth - all of these measures the government has been selling the American people aren’t to protect us from anything or anyone but to protect the elite classes in the county from you and me.

And the crazy thing is that the logic behind it is nearly infallible. There will be people from the impoverished coal mined areas of West Virginia who will gladly fire into a ranks of their starving townspeople as long as it gets their family food and shelter. For many it will be that or simply a power trip: where does Blackwater get all their goons? We’ve been brought up in a dog eat dog ethos in this country that will ultimately serve the power elites regardless of conditions.

We’re simply incapable of collective action for the broader benefit of society or even our own interests. It’s been beaten out of us. In a land where people live side by side for 20 years and never speak tp their neighbors, we won’t trust each other enough to make it work.

I mean, once again, check out the photo that I label my blog with. Those men and children were picketing Ford’s River Rouge plant and part of what made them mad is that Ford had received medals from his buddies - the Nazis. But at least Ford hired Americans. Now, the masters of industry whose shoes we’re told by Jim Cramer and such that we’re not fit to shine, have decimated American manufacturing wholesale - sold the entire country up the river. Can you imaging such a scene as depicted in this picture happening today? Oh, yeah, not without our brave police clubbing and tasering the children and veterans, of course.

Sigh.

So in the end, while even a cornered rat may fight - it may fight too late. The trick is not to wait until cornered.

But in the end, if a nation is composed of pleasure seeking servile people it will be treated as such. And that’s what Chris Hedges won’t tell you but I will.

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.