the pace of change

language and the power to torture

More on language and power, from Greenwald. On the heels of Brennan's withdrawing his name from consideration in an Obama administration, the traditional media is oh so sad that the DFHes got a scalp. He quotes a sinister NYT article that complains how the DFHes may make it "difficult for Mr. Obama to select someone . . . who has played any role in the agency’s campaign against Al Qaeda since 9/11." ANY?

Digby noted the same passage and made a similar point: that to object to someone like Brennan -- who advocated and defended the Bush administration's rendition and "enhanced interrogation tactics" -- is hardly the same as objecting to anyone who "played any role in the agency’s campaign against Al Qaeda." And Andrew Sullivan made a related point about an AP article by Pamela Hess which contains this wretched sentence: "Obama's advisers had grown increasingly concerned in recent days over Web logs that accused Brennan of condoning harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, which critics call torture." As Sullivan notes: "no sane person with any knowledge of the subject disputes the fact that waterboarding is and always has been torture. So why cannot the AP tell the truth?"

All of this underscores a crucial fact: a major reason why the Bush administration was able to break numerous laws in general, and subject detainees to illegal torture specifically, is because the media immediately mimicked the Orwellian methods adopted by the administration to speak about and obfuscate these matters. Objective propositions that were never in dispute and cannot be reasonably disputed were denied by the Bush administration, and -- for that reason alone (one side says it's true) -- the media immediately depicted these objective facts as subject to reasonable dispute.

Hence: "war crimes" were transformed into "policy disputes" between hawkish defenders of the country and shrill, soft-on-terror liberals. "Torture" became "enhanced interrogation techniques which critics call torture." And, most of all, flagrant lawbreaking -- doing X when the law says: "X is a felony" -- became acting "pursuant to robust theories of executive power" or "expansive interpretations of statutes and treaties" or, at worst, "in circumvention of legal frameworks."

But of course, don't hold breath waiting for them to examine their use of language.

words have power

Tom Ackerman presents, "A Marriage Manifesto... of Sorts"

I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying.

Turns out it’s fun.

Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.

She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”

The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,

“How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”
“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”

Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiancé with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion. There is a reason we needed stronger words for more serious relationships. We know it; now they can see it.

Take that, straight people!!

24 torture

From the Guardian ("Torture is illegal - and it never works"). Much of the article describes his correspondance with an actor who was offered a part, turned it down, and wrote to the Fox exec in charge.

Gordon also told the actor about his belief that it was "essentially true that ... 24 posits that torture is a necessary evil that works and is therefore acceptable". There was also an indication of concern. "I would hate to think," wrote Gordon, "that I've somehow been the midwife to some public acceptance of torture."

Well, the reality for Gordon, on the account given to me by Diane Beaver as well as others, is that he seems to have become the very midwife he feared. And not just to the public acceptance of torture, but to its actual use on real, living human beings.

He hopes that it "will encourage" a re-thinking of the show's position. Fat chance. (Though my students told me yesterday that the most recent plot involves him being dragged back to Washington to face indictment.)

cost of the bailout

From the author of the upcoming book Bailout Nation. The bailout -- so far -- costs more than:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

COMBINED.

innocent bystanders

Because we couldn't possibly have had a role in the problem we're criticizing!!

David Sirota complains about the media:

[T]he Newsweek reporting team is constantly referring to "reporters" and "the press" and "the media" - as if Newsweek reporters aren't a part (and a leading part) of those things - as if they are innocent bystanders. More broadly, the way they portray it, candidates and political operatives are larger than life heroes or villains who make Big Decisions and Face Consequences, while the media is a herd of lobotomized automatons that are so mindless and innocent and pure, that they cannot be held culpable for anything at all. Indeed, according to Newsweek, the entire political media is an innocent bystander to politics. And Newsweek creates this portrayal as if somehow the reporters writing their story have nothing to do with "the press" they are writing about.

They've been doing this forever, with the Clintons as the prime example. Digby notes that they're set to do so all over again:

The press is beside itself concern trolling the Obama administration about how the "Clinton Circus" will ruin him, replete with hand wringing and despair about how unfair it all is. But if it is a circus, it's because the media make it one.

These posts could be useful reading to encourage students to criticize passive voice, assigning agency, and deconstruction.

down the memory hole

Shred, shred, shred.

Last month, Salon published a story reporting that U.S. Army Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Roger Suarez were killed by U.S. tank fire in Ramadi, Iraq, in late 2006, in an incident partially captured on video, but that an Army investigation instead blamed their deaths on enemy action. Now Salon has learned that documents relating to the two men were shredded hours after the story was published. Three soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo. — including two who were present in Ramadi during the friendly fire incident, one of them just feet from where Nelson and Suarez died — were ordered to shred two boxes full of documents about Nelson and Suarez. One of the soldiers preserved some of the documents as proof that the shredding occurred and provided them to Salon. All three soldiers, with the assistance of a U.S. senator's office, have since been relocated for their safety.

It's sure going to be hard to write the history of this regime. Which is exactly what they want.

BNP bust

Oops! The British National Party's member list gets leaked to the general public. As in, a list of every member of the party. Evidently it's even being BitTorrent'ed. Needless to say, this is a bit of a problem for them:

[M]ost embarrassingly of all, an assortment of file notes providing information on their members’ employment, hobbies and interests. The former could prove particular problematic for those members of the armed forces and police for whom the BNP is a proscribed organisation. That said, the list apparently also includes construction managers, receptionists, district nurses, lay preachers, company directors and teachers, some of whom could find themselves with much explaining to do if the list remains in the wild and starts to be widely circulated.

Couldn't happen to a meaner group of people. Liberal Conspiracy has some fun with it:


There are some map links too -- a "heat map" too. A whole site full of lolcats.
Funny.

On the other hand, it appears that many on the list are not even in the Party (well, not any more). So they've been inflating their membership stats -- naughty, naughty.

Updates from Lancaster Unity -- which turns out to be the go-to site for all things BNP.

"gay nazis" in action

Well, queue the outrage from Christianists. Box Turtle Bulletin reports:

San Francisco police had to escort a group of preachers out of the Castro. Those so-called “Christians” are now using this as an excuse to post the most extraordinary claims and garnering vast amounts of publicity and sympathy for themselves on right-wing blogs.

Links to KTVU report on the story here, and also to the raw footage (5 min) that made up the report.

Here's a report from one of the prayer people, provided in the YouTube description:

Since it was a long night, I can't even begin to remember all of the things that were shouted and/or chanted at us. Then, they started throwing hot coffee, soda and alcohol on us and spitting (and maybe even peeing) on us. Then, a group of guys surrounded us with whistles, and blasted them inches away from our ears continually. Then, they started getting violent and started shoving us. At one point a man tried to steal one of our Bibles. Chrisdene noticed, so she walked up to him and said "Hey, that's not yours, can you please give it back?". He responded by hitting her on the head with the Bible, shoving her to the ground, and kicking her. I called the cops, and when they got there, they pulled her out of the circle and asked her if she wanted to press charges. She said "No, tell him I forgive him." Afterwards, she didn't rejoin us in the circle, but she made friends with one of the people in the crowd, and really connected heart to heart. Roger got death threats. As the leader of our group, people looked him in the eyes and said "I am going to kill you.", and they were serious. A cop heard one of them, and confronted him. (This part is kinda graphic, so you should skip the paragraph if you don't want to be offended.) It wasn't long before the violence turned to perversion. They were touching and grabbing me, and trying to shove things in my butt, and even trying to take off my pants - basically trying to molest me. I used one hand to hold my pants up, while I used the other arm to hold one of the girls. The guys huddled around all the girls, and protected them. Soon after, the cops came and stood between us and the mob. When it was getting more heated, the cops were like "You guys should leave." and Roger said "We want to stay." Someone tried to steal my backpack, but I tapped a cop on the shoulder, and said "Hey, that's my bag." and he got it from him and gave it to me. Others weren't so lucky. Probably half our team got their jackets stolen. Eventually, as the crowd was getting more and more uncontrollable, the cops were afraid for our lives, so they escorted us to our van. (The cops were very nice to us from start to finish.)

Story is a bit implausible to me... Okay, mean chants and whistles, sure. But notice how the account quickly descends into stereotypes: The gays are peeing on them somehow. They try to molest the narrator. They're afraid for their lives, but somehow one of them is able to brave the mob and "connect heart to heart" with one of the fallen, without being molested or killed of course. All in all, a great opportunity for the Christians to display how much they love these fags and just want to help them, but they are so depraved that they resist it:

We can't hate the people because they are just broken and blinded by the spirit of this age. Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities and Powers. It's not a political thing, we just love the people.

Comments on that story are fuckin scary. ("God will judge that city soon!" "Fucking faggots. I hope for a backlash so severe no fag would dare come out of the closet. Chase the sick liberal faggots to the shores. Icky pervert deviants. Kill them all. ")

Classic Nazi tactics: invade the enemy's neighborhood and insult them, provoking a reaction that can then be propagandized to show how "hateful" they are.

daily Godwin

Gay Nazis! But not the kind you think. Take it away Newt Gingrich:

"I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion."

Teh Gheys are coming! Watch out! If you take away their rights they will speak out against you -- just like Hitler!

In other right-wing Godwin goodness, Michael "Savage" Weiner turns over a rock to find Hilmar von Campe. He's an old aristocratic HJ basterrd whose thing appears to be writing the same book over and over again -- "I was a Hitler Youth and so I know firsthand that [the Soviet Union/globalization/Muslims/Obama] are about to take over America JUST LIKE HITLER DID!!" O NOES!!

anthropic multiverses

Some recent articles on the possibility of a multiverse.

Jason Rosenhouse wonders, "Is the Multiverse Real?" and conveys the speculation of theoretical physicists on that point.

Gets interesting when the original source, Discover magazine's "Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: The Multiverse," muses on the history of the so-called "anthropic theory" of the universe and its creation:

The idea that the universe was made just for us—known as the anthropic principle—debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter, then a physicist at Cambridge University, spoke at a conference in Poland honoring Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer who said that the sun, not Earth, was the hub of the universe. Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. By placing life in the cosmic spotlight—at a meeting dedicated to Copernicus, no less—Carter was flying in the face of a scientific worldview that began nearly 500 years ago when the Polish astronomer dislodged Earth and humanity from center stage in the grand scheme of things.

So it's a chapter in a much larger story. Could be interesting early reading.

in the sausage factory

You don't want to know how right-wing radio works. Well, sure you do. You just don't want to consume it. Milwaukee Magazine provides "Secrets of Talk Radio", and it's a sad story whose sad result have been plaguing us since 1994 at least.

lost photos from a lost city

Design Observer (online magazine?) reports on an exciting discovery - lost photos from Hiroshima. There were previously very few due to the clampdown on photography and any reports on the bombings.

But the War Department created a Physical Damage Division to go over and record the details for official purposes. They did, but even their evidence has been largely unknown for decades... until somebody found a huge stockpile of them in a surburban garbage bin. The story of their recovery is interesting enough in itself, and can be found here. The photos themselves, of course, are awe-inspiring.

decline of conservative intellectualism

WSJ has an article about how Palin represents the Republicans' 20 (40?) -year slide into anti-intellectual populism. What once was a movement of ideas and exchange has (long) become about denigrating knowledge, the people who have it, and the institutions that produce it:

For the past 40 years American conservatism has been politically ascendant, in no small part because it was also intellectually ascendant. In 1955 sociologist Daniel Bell could publish a collection of essays on "The New American Right" that treated it as a deeply anti-intellectual force, a view echoed a few years later in Richard Hofstadter's influential "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" (1963). But over the next decade and a half all that changed.

He chronicles the rise of conservative intelligentsia, and describes it as a refreshing alternative to then-ascendent liberalism and the post-60s craziness of leftist politics. But then, in the 80s, "leading conservatives frustrated with the left-leaning press and university establishment began to speak of an 'adversary culture of intellectuals.'"

Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders' intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as counter-intellectuals. Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League universities; in fact, one of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them.

And with Palin they reached their apotheosis. The question is where it goes from here.

past promise and future hope

Trying to just bask in happiness and enjoy a newfound freedom from political blogs. But of course there's commentary out there to be read!

CT is an interesting place for reflection, given its Canadian base. Kieran relays an article by a Canadian historian Rob MacDougall, who might just be on to something about America:

“We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” said Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. … King went on: “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note … a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

And here Sancho [Panza] or Sacvan [Bercovitch] whispers to the guy standing next to him, “Were they? Really? If we went back in time and asked the architects of the republic–Jefferson and Madison and Washington and the rest–did you mean for this to apply to your slaves too, would they agree? … Because it would have saved a lot of trouble if they’d spelled all this out in 1789.”

The black belt rhetorical jiu jitsu of the “I Have A Dream” speech is that King pulls it off. He convinced the better part of a nation that dismantling segregation was not so scary, not so radical, but really what they’d all meant to do all along. They just hadn’t gotten around to it, like the laundry I need to sort, or those slaves Jefferson never quite got to freeing. … And this is an old and hallowed American trick. On July 4th, 1852, Frederick Douglass blistered the ears of his white audience with prophesy … Douglass reveals that, “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted,” the Constitution is in fact “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” He embraces and celebrates the Constitution as a bulwark against slavery. …

At Seneca Falls in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton cribbed Jefferson’s words for her Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, the intimation being that “of course” the patriarchs of 1776 must have intended equal rights for women. … And so on and so on down through history, with every kind of American reformer looking backward to move forward, couching their goals as nothing more radical than America’s alleged founding ideals.

Maybe this is why we're not the center-right country that the conservatives and media claim we are after each election. The US Constitution, Declaration, and other founding documents provided an aspirational model of progress, which allows change to take place as the fulfillment, not the negation, of the nation's founding promise.

It almost doesn’t matter what Jefferson “really meant” by “all men.” No, that’s not it. It matters. It matters each and every time great and noble promises are broken. But here’s an idea Greil Marcus put in my head: the promises made in the Declaration and the Constitution are so great that their betrayal is an inevitable part of the promise. And that’s what makes them work. Marcus … calls that betrayal “the engine of American history.” The “more perfect union” is a limit approaching infinity. As each generation discovers–inevitably!–that the promises made to them were false, they battle to make them a little more true.

USA! USA!

unacceptable!

Via a Detroit Fox station... Grosse Point woman "accused of denying children candy" if they or their parents support Obama. And that is just too much! LOL. Love that phrasing there -- "denying children candy" -- what a villain!!

and another one gone, another one gone....

Another one bites the dust. Well, dust not bitten yet. But this last-minute homophobia might finish of Mitch McConnell in KY. As always, I'm torn about the situation. No pity for Mitch himself, who whether gay or not sold his soul to the Republican right a long time ago. (And geez, is his record poor across the board!) But it's another chapter in the exploitation of homophobia by traditional labor faction of the left (who it appears is responsible for this).

Biblical literalists

EPIC FAIL.

girls!

Many Sarah Palins at this week's high heel race.

voter suppression guide

TPM roundup of current status, state-by-state.

More American terrorists

Missed this originally from Neiwert.

Memo to Palin: Here are some other domestic terrorists.

Oy.

Skinheads arrested in murder spree plot. AP:

The ATF says it has broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree. In court records unsealed Monday, agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target an unnamed but predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads.

That's all they have, but look for more developments over the next few days. Further reports relayed by TPM say that the 102 number comes from 88 + 14. They were going to shoot 88 blacks and decapitate 14. Christ.

So, as we asked last time skinheads on meth were arrested with an anti-Obama plot: Were they just hopped up on drug-inflated plans, or actually serious? Well, so far it seems like they seriously planned to kill 100 people; they didn't think they could get Obama but planned to die trying.

And of course nobody could have anticipated that the Republicans' rhetoric of anti-americanism and racial agitation would have potential violent consequences.

UPDATE: More details from AP. ("Feds disrupt alleged skinhead plot to kill Obama")

eager to incite

TPM has been all over the Todd hoax and the McCain campaign's role in spreading it (which they of course deny, lying about this as they have everything else in this cycle). Oh, and Todd herself is upset with the media for "blowing it out of proportion." Wow.

Now some may to treat this as No Big Deal: Unbalanced girl gins up hoax on her own, without the campaign directing it. But the point of radical right politics is and always has been to set the tone and let the most extreme supporters draw their own conclusions. They then act to make real what the propaganda has told them already is real, but is not being paid attention to because of the biased media.

And as Eugene Robinson said on the Countdown coverage (paraphrase of around 3:40 in):

If the McCain communications director got out ahead of the police in spreading this story to the press, as it appears he did, it indicates not only a willingness to believe it, but an eagerness to incite racial backlash against the Obama campaign in a part of PA where race can be a very raw and divisive issue to this day.

He properly contextualizes it as the age-old "blood libel" of black predators against "the flower of white womanhood." It's sick, as is the camp's eagerness to spread the hoax.

Update: Perp walk!

Update 2: Youtube guy - "What Ashley Todd did wrong". Funny and understated ;)

McCain, Pinochet, and torture

Digby relays complaints by anti-torture blog After Downing Street, that the liberal blogosphere is giving McCain a pass on torture. (As Digby points out, its more properly the traditional media that has given the pass. The bloggers have been all over it.)

HoffPost has discovered that McCain met with Pinochet. PINOCHET.

recanted

Ashley Todd recants. Blames media. CBS:

Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false, police said.

Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division, said Todd is being charged with making a false police report.

Police doubted her story from the start, Bryant said.

"She just opened up and said she wanted to tell the truth," Bryant said, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "She was upset with the media for blowing this into a political firestorm."

Waah waah. Seems like she might have some mental issues though. Hope she gets help.

As the police say, this wasted a lot of time on their real cases, but it's good that they got to the bottom of it before it turned into a national incident. Meanwhile, the campaign can continue. Too bad the McCain campaign and Palin herself jumped on this one. Nothing like overreacting to poorly sourced intelligence about a pseudo-threat. Pittsburgh will greet us as liberators!!

poor persecuted conservatives

This story looks fishy. Even Malkin is calling bullshit.

Take a look at the B supposedly cut - with a knife! - into her cheek. That's no knife wound. That's a fingernail scratch. And it's backwards.... like somebody did it in a mirror! LOLZ.

Now, of course somebody did give her that shiner, so that's worth sympathy. But there's no reason to falsely politicize the way she seems to. After all, it's not like young republicans haven't tried this before.

McCain's many narratives

NYT reports on the McCain camp's inability to come up with a sustained narrative for their candidate. ("The Making (And Remaking) of McCain" by Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain.)

I'm kind of pissed that 'narrative' has become the buzzword this campaign, yet nobody ever talks with historians. Waah. Let's have some Hayden White!!

torture comes home

Pat Fitzgerald continues his reign of righteousness, this time taking down a cop who'd gone on a 20+ year torture tour through the CPD. FDL:

That's right, you read it correctly, torturing suspects while they were in custody. Twenty years of torturing suspects. The statute of limitations had run out on the physical assaults on the victims and the city of Chicago had not tried to rescind his pension. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had retired Chicago police commander Jon Burge arrested this Tuesday morning.

TAPPED notes that he got these ideas from his military career:

Wilson said Burge wired him up to a black box and turned a crank that generated an electric shock. This technique bore a striking resemblance to what American troops in Vietnam called "the Bell telephone hour"--shocking prisoners by means of a hand-cranked army field phone. In defending himself against Wilson's suit he said he'd never seen a black box, and though he'd served as a military policeman in the Mekong delta in 1968 and '69 had never heard of field phone interrogations. He bristled at the suggestion that Americans in Vietnam had conducted them.

Burge's peers from the Ninth Military Police Company, however, remember such torture in considerable detail.

See The Chicago Reader's story "Torture Tools" for the full deal.

And see also this interview with Darius Rejali, author of Torture and Democracy.

We're gonna have some big problem in the future, Freikorps-style.

another one bites the dust...

Jorg Haider. GAY. Turns out that the drunk part of his drunk-driving crash was acquired at a gay bar. And that the young hottie he turned the party over to was his lover. According to The Guardian ("Leader says Haider was his lover"):

The successor to the Austrian rightwing populist Jörg Haider, Stefan Petzner, has shocked the staunchly conservative country by revealing in a tearful interview that they shared a "special relationship".

Petzner, 27, who was confirmed yesterday as the leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZO) after Haider's death in a car crash two weeks ago, made the admission on Austrian radio, effectively confirming long-standing rumours that he and Haider were lovers.

Attempts by the party to stop repeats of the broadcast failed after the state broadcaster ORF insisted it would not be gagged.

See the Guardian for more details on their relationship. Why do the closet cases always act out so hatefully? It's sad.

generations

Yglesias is trying to form a "Generation Oregon Trail," which is a good idea but makes the crucial Gen-Y error of thinking they are the first to discover something. (Comment 81: "Maybe we could call Gen Y the hey-check-out-this-cool-thing-I-just-discovered-that-nobody-else-has ever-seen-it’s-called-Star-Wars Generation.")

Other links he serves up:

Boston.com - Brainiac's Guide to generations. His system is idiosyncratic and arrogant (see comment on this post for the latter). Here's his replacement for X.

tires slashed at Obama rally

It's hard to make too much of single incidents, but they do bear recording to see if there is really a change in political extremism this cycle. According to the Fayetteville Observer:

Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating.

Hope so.

image and reality

More on the Atlantic cover controversy, plus Newsweek's horrible evil non-retouching of Sarah Palin on their cover. "Politics of the Retouched Headshot" in The Atlantic.

Consider a recent political controversy involuntarily involving this magazine. After taking a series of shots for a conventional cover portrait of John McCain, Jill Greenberg tricked the candidate into having a picture taken in which she lit him from below, a classic technique to make the subject look evil. Neither the candidate nor his staff noticed that the photographer had literally cast McCain in a bad light. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she told the online magazine PDN, boasting further that she hadn’t retouched the neutral shot she sold The Atlantic. “I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad,” she said.

As this story illustrates, having a portrait taken for publication demands a great deal of trust in the competence and good will of the photographer and photo editor. Greenberg deceived not only McCain but The Atlantic, which objected strenuously to the abuse of trust. But suppose the magazine had been in on the ruse. Does a portrait subject have a reasonable expectation of normal lighting?

Maybe. What's funny is when Fox starts to whine about things NOT being retouched. So honesty is now dishonesty - the epitome of Bush-Rove!! Woo!

Proconsul Petraeus

We might want to re-think our org chart here... looks like Petraeus is our chief diplomat too now. (WaPo: Petraeus Mounts Strategy Review)

hey, go smack around a reporter

Report from a recent Palin rally. Get those reporters!!

There are certain things that get me really concerned when I hear them from someone I'm working with. Joe Killian (who blogs for the paper here and on his own time here) added a new one to my list:

Joe was working with me on a package for tomorrow's newspaper covering Gov. Sarah Palin's visit to Elon and Greensboro.

"Dude," he says when I called to check on him. "Some guy just kicked me in the back of the leg."

And it goes downhill from there. Sieg Heil!!

Whose empire?

Mark Mazower's book Hitler's Empire gets reviewed in the Washington Post. ("Axis of Incompetence") Sounds like a good book, but the review itself is noteworthy because of how popularity-seeking it is. Mazower gives it a snappy title, the Post puts a snappy headline, and the body reads like the Nazis wore blue suits and red ties.

The reason: Nazi articles of faith amounted to grotesque fantasies about how the New Order would function, and they couldn't possibly survive prolonged, or even relatively short, clashes with reality.

An interesting fixation on photography and humiliation, meant to evoke Abu Ghraib.

In the midst of a widening conflict, German officials methodically photographed and examined Polish families, discriminating in favor of those who appeared to have "the soundest German blood." All of which was guaranteed to stir resentment. Even Colonel-General Johannes von Blaskowitz, one of the German commanders in Poland, noted: "The idea that one can intimidate the Polish population by terrorism and rub their noses in the dirt will certainly prove false."

Will have to check out the incidents that the review describes. Have never really encountered foced pseudo-medical photography before (but of course it makes total sense if they did).

Possible assignment in combination with book-review paper, or for own paper about historicity.

Millenial YouTube

"Citizen's Cry" - An Internet Video Produced to Inspire the Youth of Today to Vote.

Image of an old woman sitting in a crappy shack, who turns out to be a Millenial regretting her generation's failure to prevent America's decline - because they didn't vote! O NOES!

realignment myth?

Another from Yglesias, who relays:

Via Henry Farrell, a provocative argument from Larry Bartels that the FDR realignment was basically just a coincidence.

From the original article:

The 1936 election has become the most celebrated textbook case of ideological realignment of the American electorate. However, a careful look at state-by-state voting patterns suggests that this resounding ratification of Roosevelt’s policies was strongly concentrated in the states that happened to enjoy robust income growth in the months leading up to the vote. (As usual, voters seem to have been quite myopic—huge variations in income growth in 1934 and 1935 had no discernible effect on 1936 voting patterns.) Indeed, the apparent impact of short-term economic conditions was so powerful that, if the recession of 1938 had occurred in 1936, Roosevelt would probably have been a one-term president.

Basically every party in power when the Depression lifted then dominated for a decade, and it was just luck, and any patterns are our human need for pattern recognition acting up. So goes the theory.

culture (war) and economics

From Yglesias, a George Packer story in the New Yorker on the disaffected Ohio working class ("The Hardest Vote"). Short story, they're pissed because they can't afford to get married and raise a traditional family.

The American Prospect ("Remapping the Culture Debate") describes how this anxiety does not lead voters to Democratic economic policies, which they see as alien to their concerns, but rather to cultural issues as markers for who cares more about their problems and thus, presumably, will solve them:

When it came to defining themselves in the nation's ongoing cultural battles -- such as the battle over “family values” -- Democrats had virtually ceded the field to Republicans, presenting an uncertain face to the public. Voters, the research showed, were looking to cultural and lifestyle markers to determine whether or not a candidate was, in fact, going to do right by the economy, the Democrats' one persistently strong area. The Democracy Corps pollsters concluded that voters saw traditional Democratic economic concerns as having little to do with them, being mainly “manifested in costly government social programs or political alliances with labor unions and minorities.” The party's inattentiveness to cultural matters had, paradoxically, left these voters with “absolutely no sense that Democrats have a viable alternative vision that would truly promote broad economic growth or increased prosperity for working Americans.”

But it looks like that may be turning around... now that things are going in the shitter. Prospect:

The new Puritanism and cultural conservatism Frank described can also been seen as symptoms of how, in today’s society, traditional values have become aspirational. Lower-income individuals simply live in a much more disrupted society, with higher divorce rates, more single moms, more abortions, and more interpersonal and interfamily strife, than do the middle- and upper-middle class people they want to be like. It should come as no surprise that the politics of reaction is strongest where there is most to react to.

Sound like any dissertations you've read recently? Heee...

political violence 2008

Welcome to 1932 -- oh wait, 2008. The GOP returns to its "ugly roots" (Salon: Gary Kamia) in racist paranoia and violence against elites and urban faggotry.

Palin supporter yells out "KILL HIM!!" at rally. Others racially taunt a media sound man.

McCain supporter responds to his question "Who is Barack Obama?" with answer, "A terrorist!"

Looks like it's spreading to Canada too: Cars in front of houses with liberal yard signs have their brakes cut in St Paul. (Digby)

Meanwhile, a porn producer is sentenced to 4 YEARS PRISON for filming consensual activities... while the Abu Ghraib perpetrators in the White House walk free.

Make-believe Maverick

From Rolling Stone, a fairly complete and thoroughly devastating history of John McCain:

In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

All in all, "a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty."

talk radio 2005

David Foster Wallace just killed himself. Ezra Klein links a piece he did for the Atlantic on talk radio circa 2005. Good details on a scary subculture.

consolidating frame

Some recent DailyKos posts to add to AS and others - we may be at a moment where a new liar frame is emerging about McCain. Not because the bloggers are calling out lies like they've been doing, but that the traditional media is shifting (finally) to ignoring the superficial content and going for the real pattern - the consistent lies on all subjects. And if you believe that elections are decided on things like framing, then this is devastating.

What is surprising this election season is that a piece of the megamedia actually seems to be starting to call out campaign lies, as Chris Carlson points out. Some of the traditional media - the old and established media so calcified and concentrated and craven that it failed to examine the lies of the men and women of an administration whose policies McCain and Palin would like to continue for another four years - actually are saying, "wait a minute, that’s frakkin’ bullshit."

Well, they've not gone quite that far.

Also, the loss of intellectual authority then gives other figures cover to oppose you on principle, like Alan Greenspan has just done. (AP: "Greenspan: Country Can't Afford McCain's Tax Cuts")

Cool chart of the tax plans btw. Send to friends!

Les Misbarack

check out Palin as the Thernadiers ;)

Youtube

quoted in entirety

Andrew Sullivan brings it:

If McCain were a blogger, he would have had to retract by now. But he's running for president of the United States, so he can say anything, lie about anything and not have to answer for it. Yesterday, John McCain lied on national television about something that no one disputes in the public record. He was challenged by the only serious journalists on television right now - the hosts of "The View" - about the large number of pork barrel earmarks Sarah Palin sought and secured as governor of Alaska, including the "Bridge To Nowhere" that Palin and McCain lied about and are still lying about in public. Here was his clear and irrefutable statement:

Palin's comments came after McCain sat for a feisty grilling on ABC's "The View," where he claimed erroneously that his running mate hadn't sought money for such pet projects. "Not as governor she didn't," McCain said, ignoring the record.

It has now been a day since McCain lied this explicitly in public. And he hasn't yet retracted his lie. This AP piece is dated as of this afternoon. Why not?

Because if he has to retract this lie, he will have to retract his multiple other lies? While the media demands that Obama respond to things he never said and never meant, McCain is not even asked to retract a bald-faced, massive, obvious, refutable lie.

In the last month, McCain has become the biggest liar in the modern history of presidential politics. He makes Bill Clinton look like George Washington.

Word.

creeping falangism

Ha. Nice title for this story from TPM. McCain campaign caught making up crowd size numbers.

Also from TPM, a reader's comment on the consequences of politics based on lies. Possible end stage campaign theme seems to be shaping up. Josh: "This campaign has shown that while we know McCain has physical courage, he has bad moral character"

it's all our fault

Driftglass gets a little too insulting at times, but damn, he has a point.

Hell, if the election were between the Risen Christ (D) and Satan’s Fiery Cock (R), come election day polling would still peg it at “too close to call”: 45% Risen JC, 45% Lucifer’s Penis, 7% undecided (“My friend Laura says that Mr. Jesus is good on the economy, but I just trust that Fiery Cock fella a little bit more on keeping America safe. And his running mate is so feisty!”), 2% Ron Paul and 1% Ralph “Not a dime’s worth of difference between them!” Nader.

This election was, is and will continue to be over that oblivious 8%.

Maybe it is audacious, but let's hope they do what's right.

rally disruption

McCain cuts speech short due to chanting Obama supporters who were in the area. Media is playing it like he's weak and lost without his gal Palin. Ha.

After lunching with a roundtable of women at Philadelphia’s Down Home Diner, McCain shook hands with supporters and strode up to a podium to deliver a statement. But as he spoke, chants of “Obama, Obama, Obama” filled the room.

Reporters craned forward trying to hear the Arizona senator. Unfortunately for McCain — and possibly overlooked by aides who planned the event — a section of the diner opened up to a market where a crowd had gathered behind a cordon.

Also, this might be the time to link to Adam Kokesh, the "revolutionary patriot" and Vets Against the War member who busted up McCain's acceptance speech. The video linked has some comments on why he disrupted the speech - McCain refused to meet with veterans' groups or discuss their concerns. ("At least Obama pretended to listen" he says) So he decided to deliver an alternate message. Some of his ideas get pretty threatening unfortunately, but looking at things through his eyes, I would be pretty pissed off too.

more levity

And actually about politics. What else from Triumph?

I came here to poop on her but I am in loooove!!

Hopefully we will be able to look back on all this and laugh.

Siegels vs DC

The Superboy copyright saga explained! An FAQ from 2006.

Wow, change of pace from the latest entries, I know ;)

if this stands...

...we have no democracy. Over in Mississippi, where the Republicans already lost one special election recently:

So what does Republican Gov. Haley Barbour (the former RNC chair) and the Republican Secretary of State do? They shuffle the placement of the race on the ballot in order to bury it. They put it last, under all the local and minor races, things like school board races and so on, so that it's difficult to find. They do their best to hide it, knowing that it will lower the response rate and help the Republican incumbent.

The problem is, it's plainly illegal. It's not "arguably" illegal, or "a little" illegal. It's just plain illegal. Barbour, however, doesn't care. He's gonna do it anyway, because the advantage of getting that race buried, thus helping the Republican, far outweighs the odds that anyone can actually do anything about it in time to make a difference for the election.

There are very clear rules being violated. Nobody knows. Nobody cares.

P&G worships the devil!!

From Slacktivist, a background to the viral rumor (that I am just hearing of) that a P&G exec went on TV and declared that the company sends a portion of its profits to the Church of Satan. ("False witness") Turns out it was a calculated plot by another soap company to target the evangelical community.

The post analyzes of why people pass on rumors that are obviously false. Malice, or stupidity? After much thought and resistance to the idea, Slacktivist decides on the former:

The dossier/Snopes approach doesn't work because it attempts to apply facts and reason to people who are not interested in either facts or reason. That's not a nice thing to say, or even to think, about anyone else, which is why I was reluctant and slow to reach that conclusion. But that conclusion was inevitable.

In trying to combat the P&G slander with nothing more than irrefutable facts proving it false, I was operating under a set of false assumptions. Among these:

1. I assumed that the people who claimed to believe that Procter & Gamble supported the Church of Satan really did believe such a thing.

2. I assumed that they were passing on this rumor in good faith -- that they were misinforming others only because they had, themselves, been misinformed.

3. I assumed that they would respect, or care about, or at least be willing to consider, the actual facts of the matter.

4. Because the people spreading this rumor claimed to be horrified/angry about its allegations, I assumed that they would be happy/relieved to learn that these allegations were, indisputably, not true.

All of those assumptions proved to be false. All of them. This was at first bewildering, then disappointing, and then, the more I thought about it, appalling -- so appalling that I was reluctant to accept that it could really be the case.

But it is the case.

I kept expecting a comparison to recent political events, but s/he is more restrained than I.

depressing Sunday

More from the Twin Cities. Makes me sad.

The torture, sadism, and abuse the Minneapolis Police, St. Paul Police, Ramsey County Sheriffs (and out of town departments) unleashed upon protesters, press, passers-by, and community members took place while Homeland Security and the Secret Service they control were in direct command of all area "law" enforcement and had final authority over all decisions about protests and protesters. In other words, what we saw in the Twin Cities shows us how American local "law" enforcement act in broad daylight when the Feds are on the scene and supervising their work.

Over the last week, we had a chance to observe de facto professional cultural norms in America's local, state, and Federal enforcement. This is what democracy looks like?

Hardly. Post goes on to outline all kinds of horrible abuses, including deliberate targeting of journalists and medics. And they're also going after random black people just for the hell of it. And check this:

Just a few rogue cops who don't believe in negotiation? Nope.

Twin Cities "law" enforcement now storms into meetings between residents and elected political leaders.

A peaceful meeting of lawyers with the Mayor of Minneapolis to discuss the police-incited riots and the way peaceful protesters and journalists have been treated is broken up by cops in FULL RIOT GEAR.

This is what democracy looks like?

WTF!?!?!

Northwest passage, northeast passage, its all the same now

"North police ice cap now an island"

For the first time in recorded human history, the Arctic is completely surrounded by open water, new satellite images reveal.

Using images from NASA, scientists at the University of Bremen in Germany have concluded that both the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northeast Passage over Russia are now free of ice, making it possible to sail around the North Pole.

Bring on the reign of the north!

From Media Matters:

Here's how Tom Engelhardt begins his latest piece, "Going on an Imperial Bender": "Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers...

MM summarizes:

The rest of Engelhardt's piece explores how we have garrisoned the planet, why it's not news in the United States, and what the costs of ignorance are to this country, literal and figurative.

Could be good to assign in 2nd semester

more from St Paul

Motherfuckers.

intemperate but true

"How the Secret Service Turned into the Stasi"

And if that isn't Godwin-defying, which it technically is not, then why not refer to them as the SS throughout. That's their proper acronym after all.

RNC protest police state

Bitch, PhD:

Criminalize dissent, privatize public space (and, I would add, politicize private space): the tactics of police and Homeland Security over the weekend leading up to the convention

Needless impounding of a bus on which this earth-activist family lives

All the lies told in defense of the police state

Video from Amy Goodman, journalist with Democracy Now! who was arrested for nothing

See also Glenzilla ("Massive police raids on suspected protectors" -- emphasizing the pre-emptive nature of the police response and its brutality. The best part is where the city code people come by to try and shutter the house for violations including a busted back door -- that the police kicked in). Also his Scenes from Saint Paul, other links as well.

Firedoglake: It also helps to remember that the fascists behind this do so to cover up their own corruption. (Godwin violation mine, not theirs)

chinese torture in guantanamo

Okay, it's been like two months. But that's summer. Couldn't pass this up, however, for magnitude of sickness (and, at this point, obviousness).

NYT: China Inspired Interrogations at Guantanamo

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

So it's basically Manchurian Candidate meets Darkness at Noon. Wonderful.

What. The. FUCK?

Just when you think the Bushies have killed your capacity for outrage... ABCNews: "US Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators":

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.

U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.

"Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely we're better than that."

As Attaturk on FDL said: Lady, you're forgetting who's been in charge here for 8 years. Sick.

seasteading

A bunch of libertarians are planning to create new sea-based platform communities. (Wired: "Peter Thiel makes down payment on libertarian ocean colonies") Hopefully it won't go all Randian dystopia like Bioshock!

Big Brother is... making music videos

British rockers The Get Out Clause performed their song "Paper" in front of the now-ubiquitous CCTV cameras in London - then requested the footage under the terms of the Data Protection Act and cut it together to make the video. Pretty smart.

The Obama Doctrine

The American Prospect interviews Obama's foreign policy team and gives him his own Doctrine. It's not just about specific foreign policy issues, but about - as he often says - "the mindset that got us into war in the first place." And more than anything, it's about Democrats finally abandoning their reflexive tendency to play Republican light because they fear looking weak.

Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. It cuts to the heart of traditional Democratic timidity. "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," Obama said in a January speech. "It's time to say that we are the party that is going to be strong and right." (The Democrat who counseled that Americans wanted someone strong and wrong, not weak and right? That was Bill Clinton in 2002.)

That's a bit unfair to Clinton, I think, because it comes off as if he's advocating being wrong. I think he was just observing, accurately, the reason Dems got pummeled that year: they hadn't stood up for their beliefs. But of course his wife is Exhibit A of that, as are most of the Boomer Dems in leadership over the last 15 years.

The Obama foreign-policy team describes it as "the politics of fear," a phrase most advisers used unprompted in our conversations. "For a long time we've not seen much creative thinking from Dems on national security, because, out of fear, we want to be a little different from the Republicans but not too different, out of fear of being labeled weak or indecisive," another top adviser says. Identifying that fear as the accelerant of the Iraq War mind-set is the first step to a new and innovative foreign policy. John Kerry was not able to argue for fundamental change in foreign policy because he was consumed by that very political fear. Obama's admonition to Democrats is much like Pope John Paul II's to the Gdansk shipyard strikers -- first, be not afraid.

A good start for a new century. If a few years too late... but it's never too late!

Maddow/Matthews on appeasement flap

The gift that keeps on giving. Maddows guest hosted Countdown last Friday, and had Matthews on to talk about the destructive nature of talking point-driven political culture, in which people mouth magic words to stigmatize their opponents and drive them out of the public square. C&L has the video:

MADDOW: Do you think this is something new? Do you think this is something specific to our current, contemporaneous politics that we have these sort of buzzwords and bumper sticker slogans, whether it’s ‘appeasement,’ or ‘fight over there so we don’t fight them here’ or ‘they hate our freedom,’ any of these terms. Are they designed to be repeated and not to be interrogated?

MATTHEWS: Well, just look at the way people are basically exterminated or tried to be exterminated. Bill Maher makes a comment –which may not have been the right comment–but he was making a point he was trying to make, about stand back weaponry compared to people killing themselves. You can argue about the niceties of that. The Dixie Chicks say something about the war—and they shouldn’t have said it overseas, but they said it. The shutting up of opposition is critical to running a country in an undemocratic way, let’s put it that way. And so you have buzzwords like ‘appeasers’ or ‘cut and run’ and they’re used over and over again by the most mindless people. The trouble with them is they tend to work. The dittoheads can use them. Anyone can use them and they seem to have the same effect. They cause people to run from criticism.

Ollie North, "history guy"?

Jeebus help me.... C&L presents Ollie North defending the appeasement dustup. THIS IS THE LAST PERSON WHO SHOULD TALK ABOUT GIVING SHIT TO AMERICAN ENEMIES. Ahem. Sorry about the screaming. But the stupid, it burns. C&L comment:

For someone who was lucky not to have spent the better part of the last two decades making license plates, he’s got some nerve touching this topic. This is the guy who oversaw the arms for hostages deal with Iran in 1985 (among other crimes), right in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war in which the US was actively and openly arming and supporting Saddam Hussein. Ollie North didn’t just talk with Iran at a time they were our enemy in a proxy-war, he actually helped to arm them, bypassing Congress by violating the Boland Amendment to help fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.

Lacking even a shred of credibility, Fox News’ “history guy” is to the truth in the historical record what Dick Cheney is to gun safety. He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the subject, and anyone who believes a word of what he says about it is a fool.

Word!

yelling "appeasement"

They always do it, and they're always wrong. Peter Scoblic in the LA Times:

if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight.

He goes through the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan administration examples. It's insane. These people are warmongering psychopaths at every turn. They do not change their tune. Our foreign policy successes have for 60 years come when they are ignored, either by Democrats or by their own party. Even in Bush II:

The Bush administration has been little different, refusing for years to talk to North Korea or Iran about their nuclear programs because it wanted to defeat evil, not talk to it. The result was that Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon and Iran's uranium program continued unfettered. (By contrast, when the administration negotiated with Libya -- an act that its chief arms controller, John Bolton, had previously derided as, yes, "appeasement" -- it succeeded in eliminating Tripoli's nuclear program.)

But nooooo, can't talk to Iran. What ignorance.

more millennials - the smackdown finally comes

Finally, someone says what I've been thinking about all the millenial praise going on right now. (Robert Landham, "Generation Slap" in Radar Online) It's those Boomers again, praising the Ys as much as they buried the Xs:

The boomers' decades-long spin campaign against Generation X has entered a new phase as they've begun to promote Millennials at our expense. Lest you think I'm paranoid, the proof of their plot to elevate the so-called "Internet generation" can be discovered by anyone who knows how to use Google. As it turns out, my generation founded the company. So, to prove my point, let's Google back in time to provide a little context.

On Monday, July 16, 1990, the largely baby boomer–run Time published a cover story called "Twentysomething." It was the one of the magazine's best-selling covers in history, and introduced Generation X—we were known as the baby busters then—to the public, largely defining how we were perceived as a generation. Those who read it will recall that the piece possessed the journalistic muster of a Dateline story on poisonous dog food imports from China. In short, "Twentysomething" was meant to alarm the public into believing they'd raised a generation of stoic nihilists who, as one interviewee stated, were destined to be America's "carpenters and janitors." The only thing preventing us from flushing America's future down the toilet was our lack of initiative. We were too slack to flush.

Reminds me of a statement by Michael Hais in the FDL Book Salon thread on Millennial Makeover (comment 197):

In our PPT presentation, Morley and I show Time and Newsweek magazine covers taken from issues ten years apart–the former when Gen-Xers were teens and the latter when Millennials were teens. In the older picture, all of the Gen-X teens were dressed in black, none were smiling, and none were looking at any of the others in the pictures. In the newer cover, all of the Millennials were dressed in bright colors, smiling, and toching one another. It surely captured the individualism and pessimism of the X’ers and the optimism and unity of the Millennials.

What a dumb statement. Those covers are STAGED images. Boomer-constructed stereotypes of the generations after theirs. It's like Reality Bites, where the footage the Xers shot the whole film is re-cut into an acerbic, nihilistic hit job on their generation. (Done, as Lanham notes, by a few sellout Gen-X traitors catering to corporate Boomer types.)

more appeasement

Yglesias links a study from the Army War College - Jeffrey Record's "Appeasement Reconsidered." Very cool report on how the events of 1938 have been utilized in postwar America to justify aggressive reactions to possible foreign policy challenges.

From the conclusion:

The problem with seeing Hitler in Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Saddam Hussein is that it reinforces the presidential tendency since 1945 to overstate threats for the purpose of rallying public and congressional opinion, and overstated threats in turn encourage resort to force in circumstances where deterrence, containment, even negotiation (from strength) might better serve long-term U.S. security interests. Threats that are, in fact, limited tend to be portrayed in Manichaean terms, thus skewing the policy choice toward military action, a policy choice hardly constrained by possession of global conventional military primacy and an inadequate understanding of the limits of that primacy.

If the 1930s reveal the danger of underestimating a security threat, the post-World War II decades contain examples of the danger of overestimating a security threat.

Assign this as an optional reading during Hitler week, to remind how history is used in public discourse.

latest outrage

The Kos diarist I saw this first from called it "worse than Abu Ghraib." I dunno about that. But it has, I guess, similar incindiary potential in the Muslim world. Remember the allegations about Koran desecration? Well now one was used for target practice by a 4th Infantry Division sniper.

The CNN follow-up story ("Behind the Scenes: Apology for a Desecration") is pretty interesting as it chronicles the general's public apology to local religious leaders. It's very ceremonial, and a good example of the challenges in an occupation of this nature.

A former college quarterback, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, stood facing the angry crowd. His face was grim and fixed as tribal sheikhs swirled around him.

"I am a man of honor, I am a man of character. You have my word, this will never happen again," the general told the angry crowd through loudspeakers, pounding the makeshift podium three times with his fist.

"In the most humble manner, I look in to your eyes today and I say, please forgive me and my soldiers." The act of his sniper was criminal, he said. "I've come to this land to protect you, to support you...this soldier has lost the honor to serve the United States Army and the people of Iraq here in Baghdad."

Martin stood before the crowd next, opening his address with an Islamic blessing. He announced the sergeant had been relieved of duty with prejudice; reprimanded by the commanding general with a memorandum of record attached to his military record; dismissed from the regiment and redeployed from the brigade.

Holding a new Quran in his hands, he turned to the crowd. "I hope that you'll accept this humble gift." Martin kissed the Quran and touched it to his forehead as he handed it to the tribal elders. The crowd's voice rose, "Yes, yes, to the Quran. No, no, to the devil."

But would it be enough to appease the mood in Radhwaniya? A local sheikh came to the microphone. "In the name of all the sheikhs," he said, "we declare we accept the apology that was submitted."

And the kicker, to me, was the phrase scrawled on this Koran -- "FUCK YEAH." And so the uncritical jingoist embrace of that film continues apace. Lovely.

epic Godwin battle of the century

Damn!!

First, Bush violates all kinds of political norms in going off on Obama (well, his favorite "some people") during a speech to the Knesset for Israel's 60th anniversary.

Second, Democrats and tv journalists go nuts blowing his lame comments away. (Especially on the heels of yesterday's idiotic "I quit golf" lies.) Biden calls "bullshit" -- LITERALLY.

Third, some absolutely psychotic right-wing talk show host (Kevin James, apparently - no, not that one!) goes on Hardball to try and defend the comments and attack Obama. Pulls out all the appeasement b.s he's been trained to do... and Matthews asks a simple question: "What did Neville Chamberlain do?" Hilarity ensues.

Salon War Room's summary:

Matthews asked James a simple question: What exactly did Chamberlain do that was so wrong? (The following is a close paraphrase of the ensuing exchange.)

Well, he was an appeaser, James exclaimed.

Yeah, but what did he do?

He was an appeaser!

Kevin, what exactly did Chamberlain do?

He appeased!

Pretty much sums it up. The whole segment has to be seen to be believed. James was screaming and finger pointing from his first words. Matthews was bemused at first, then ripped him a new one. One of the more amazing takedowns of recent tv gabfests. Matthews absolutely destroyed him -- "if you don't know what appeasement is, don't talk about it!"

Definitely one to show the kids in class. How NOT to do historical analogies. You can't just throw out buzzwords, you have to define them with details.

scary new world

From Wired -- Visible Man: an artist and professor mistakenly put on the terrorist watch list can't clear his name... so instead he started a web site, TrackingTransience.net, that makes his life an open book.

There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you'll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map.

Elahi's site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you're on, it's hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials can go to his site and see where he is and what he's doing. Indeed, his server logs show hits from the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.

Why do this?

The idea is to give them all info in real time, so they feel no need to investigate him.
So it dawned on him: If being candid about his flights could clear his name, why not be open about everything? "I've discovered that the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away," he says, grinning as he sips his venti Black Eye. Elahi relishes upending the received wisdom about surveillance. The government monitors your movements, but it gets things wrong. You can monitor yourself much more accurately. Plus, no ambitious agent is going to score a big intelligence triumph by snooping into your movements when there's a Web page broadcasting the Big Mac you ate four minutes ago in Boise, Idaho. "It's economics," he says. "I flood the market."

So it's both an interesting reaction and a FUCKING SCARY SIGN of the lengths we have to go through in this new security state.

Johns Adams fact and fiction

Writer of HBO's recent (and excellent) John Adams considers what parts of the historical record they changed, and why. (TNR: "One for the Books")

A screenwriter always seeks economy in storytelling. Of course I knew that there were two Boston Massacre trials, not one. But the audience would not have thanked us for devoting the whole of the first episode to an examination of courtroom procedure, with two separate verdicts rendered. The key dramatic points are Adams's decision to defend Captain Preston and his soldiers, and his success at exonerating them on the charge of murder. Both points are "factual." Has there been some manipulation involved in the dramatization? Absolutely. But the outcome of the proceedings has not been altered.

Other examples are more suspect. But the general point remains, and in any case it's an interesting thing to present to students as a thought piece on how to write and present history.

Bush's pet terrorist

From Digby:

Luis Posada Carriles, an admitted terrorist wanted for crimes in Latin America, had a nice dinner the other night.

...the man being honored by 500 fellow Cuban Americans at a sold-out gala was Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago [...]

Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism.

...

Analysts speculate that the U.S. government has dodged calls for prosecution of Posada for fear he would disclose details of CIA involvement in coups, assassination plots and scandals, including the Iran-Contra Affair.

Peter Kornbluh, head of the Cuba Documentation Project at George Washington University's National Security Archive, has compiled declassified CIA and FBI documents on Posada that show he remained in close touch with Washington handlers throughout his covert service.

"The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration's commitment to wage a war on terrorism," he said of Posada's coming-out party.

More from Digby on Justice Department's almost purposeful incompotence in managing his hearings.

Useful for 20th century CIA ops part of course.

Hitler's War on America

Google videos provides the documentary, which raises some discussion (among its viewers) concerning the similarity of Hitler's plots and the 9/11 hijackings. Of course, as we know, the first plane to hit a building in New York was during that era...

Vidal Sasoon: scourge of fascists!

Who'da thunkit? Harry at CT makes an offhand joke about Vidal Sassoon's history as a nazi-fighter... and it's true!!

And so it was that the fresh-faced cockney (the measured, mid-Atlantic tones of the modern Vidal are the product of elocution lessons taken in the 1950s) signed up with the 43 Group, a crudely armed paramilitary force which began as 43 Jewish ex-servicemen and which by its peak was to number more than 1,000 Jews and gentiles, men and women. "We had turned the cheek for the last time," says Sassoon, who heard about it on the Whitechapel grapevine. "And as a 17-year-old recruit, I was proud to be involved. The men were mostly ex-servicemen, unsung heroes who had fought for five years and had come back to be abused by fascists as they walked down the street. They didn't want anything but peace, but it was disgusting that having just fought a war against Nazism, home-grown fascists were allowed to start reorganising. Something had to be done.

...

A boy amongst hardened fighting men, Sassoon was to become one of the toughest and keenest of all the informal soldiers.

"He was only a kid, but he was a tough little shtarka", says a former group commander and comrade, retired paratrooper Gerry Lambert, using a Yiddish word that corresponds, more or less, to hard man. Many former 43ers remember Vidal well and his solid reputation of standing firm when the fists started flying. "To think what a big deal hairdresser he would become," said one of the veterans. "You would never have guessed to see him there, deep in the fray. At that time he was just the sort of guy you wanted standing right by your side when the fighting started. And back then, of course, we often had to break the law. It was out of necessity. We had to use the same weapons as the fascists did: knuckle-dusters, coshes, and cut throat razors".

Wow! One to pull out in future lectures for the kids who only know him as a stylist.

Lincoln-Douglas smackdown

C&L links some historical malpractice from Fox & Friends... their intern suggests they find videos of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Which is, obviously, hiliarious in its own right. But the best part is that while they're mocking this intern, the picture they have up as an illustration is Lincoln and.... Frederick Douglass. LOLZ.

Mission Accomplished!

Happy Mission Accomplished Day, everyone!! Yes, it's been five years. And 4,000 dead Americans - but who's counting? Wasn't Bush HAWT in that manly flight suit?

Editor & Publisher roundup of the NYT coverage of this stunt and its aftermath. One interesting note:

“The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.”

Guess that statement is 'no longer operative'... For more, see Greg Mitchell's So Wrong for So Long.

But the worst of course are the jock-sniffing reactions of our major media figures, which Media Matters provides for your throwing-up-in-the-mouth-a-little pleasure. There's too much to quote here, but it just makes you sick over and over.

daily Godwin

Note to Ben Stein: When the Corner isn't in your corner, give it up.

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

You can see the whole shameful thing here. It's a pity Crouch didn't invite the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into the studio for a three-way conversation. It would have elevated the tone.

Hee.