Memorial Day 2015

On 8 July 2003, in the middle of the night, a squad of 13 guys led by me landed on the runway of what had been called, until very recently, the Saddam International Airport in Baghdad. We were there to take over security of the area from one of the squads who'd gone in to set up the camp four months earlier.

The landing was pretty standard for a region known for rocket attacks - we flew over the end of the runway, and then spiraled down, straightening out at the last possible moment, to touch down while presenting as small a target within reach of the ground forces as possible.

At that point, I was a lukewarm liberal, not the most outspoken person politically; my wife had eased me out of some fairly conservative views, and turned me into a compassionate human being (I'm not sure I've ever forgiven her for that).

While over there, seeing the rubble we'd left of a beautiful city and learning more and more about how the Bush Administration had lied to get America to go to war, my attitude began to swing more firmly to the left.

I was lucky (if that's the right word) that none of the guys I took there came back in a box (one of them essentially came back in a straightjacket, but that's a story for another time). We didn't have a lot of direct fire - our big risk was the daily, ongoing rocket and mortar attacks.

I started learning more about what went on in the run-up to the invasion, and when I got back to the States, I volunteered for the Kerry campaign. And I wasn't the only vet in the room. That didn't work out as well as we'd hoped, and the day after Kerry gave his concession speech, I filed my retirement papers from the military.

So maybe I have a different perspective on the subject. I find myself getting a little angry as the GOP tries to rewrite what is, for many of us, current events.

We didn't invade the country that attacked America, we invaded Iraq based on lies that they weren't cooperating with US weapons inspectors. To call that action "a mistake" is an abuse of the English language. But that's the currently popular position to take on the Right.

The full story (that some people in the Bush administration felt that we needed a permanent base in the Middle East, and it was just fine to destroy a country to get that) wasn't something that would go over well with the American people. So they had to change the narrative. It wasn't a "mistake," it was a calculated effort to mislead the public.

(If you don't know about them already, you should read up on the think tank that called themselves The Project for the New American Century. Jeb Bush is trying to back slowly away from his statement that he would have invaded Iraq, just like his brother did. (And of course he would have. Most of his advisers previously worked for his brother.)

Marco Rubio won't even go that far - he thinks it wasn't a mistake because it got Saddam out of power. So apparently, all those Iraqis can just suck it.

In a recent Rolling Stone article, Matt Taibbi pointed out that, as I said above, it was actually clear to a lot of people "that the invasion was doomed, wrong, and a joke."

It was not a "mistake," it was a cold-blooded, calculated conspiracy, carried out from the highest office in the nation.

It's a hell of a "mistake" that leads to almost 4500 dead Americans, and literally countless Iraqi dead and injured.

Memorial Day. It's all about remembering.

Talkin' with Dad

I always respected my Dad as an educated man, but at some point, he turned into one of those cranky Republicans completely blinded by an abject hatred of the Kenyan-in-Chief. I don't know when that was (most likely, around 2008), but there it is.

He likes to forward random emails and the like, and often includes me in his mailing list, just because it tickles his sense of humor. And I tend to respond in good grace.

So the other day, when I saw an email from him entitled "usma1959-forum: Fw: Saul David Alinsky," I knew we were in for a bumpy ride. And I was right.

As far as I could tell, he just sent this to me and a bunch of his West Point buddies (that's in the title: US Military Academy forum, and his graduating class of 1959), and he started it with "Scary, isn't it?"

After that, it was standard boilerplate propaganda, only unique in that it was in green Comic Sans with red "titles" for each bullet point. But the weird part is, aside from the random formatting, it was familiar. Somebody had taken an old Obama/Alinsky email, added a line to the beginning about Hillary Clinton writing her senior thesis on Alinsky, and we were off to the races.

Now, like I said, I love my Dad, even when he's being an idiot. So I didn't hit "reply all." I replied just to him, and wrote:

You know, you could look these things up for yourself, instead of falling for any old chunk of BS that rolls down the line.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/alinsky.asp

(If you really need to read it now, feel free to follow the link. But I go over the high points later, and didn't think I should repeat it more than once. Your choice.)

I figured that my reply to his email would be the end of it. And in a reasonable world, it would be. But no. (I had to get my stubborn streak somewhere, right?)

Agreed. Except that while the Alinsky connections are not only suspect, they are downright false. the eight points are a rewrite of the "Communist Rules" (See the Snopes article that you quoted. And regardless of the accuracy of the thing, we are headed down a slippery slope because all of the eight points in the original e-mail are being pushed by the Obongo administration, and I fear for the country if we keep on.

Love you – Dad

Yes, that's right. "Obongo." As he's gotten older, he's become less and less reticent about his racism. (In his defense, he's never sent me a picture of Obama photoshopped to look like a witchdoctor - I can't guarantee that he didn't send one to other people, of course.)

I'd tried to be nice. I really had. But if he was going to push it...

Yup, Gonna have to look closer at 'em, aren't we?

First, yes, those "8 points" are a rewrite of the "Communist rules for revolution." Which are also mythical. You didn't go deep enough: those "8 points" date back to either the end of WWII or the McCarthy era, and are idiot counterfeits - propaganda from your father's era, which somebody dug up, dusted off, and recycled (apparently successfully, based on your reaction).

http://www.snopes.com/history/document/communistrules.asp

But, hey, let's go farther, shall we? Let's look at this dreadful list that has you so fearful for the future of America.

1) Healthcare– Control healthcare and you control the people
Well, there's an obvious flaw right there. Obama doesn't "control healthcare." The insurance companies are still at work making a profit. It's a capitalist solution to a healthcare crisis - there is no "socialized medicine." There's just suddenly some regulation on an industry that's been stealing from the American people for far too long. And they hate that.

(In your defense, there is one example of "socialized medicine" in America. It's called the Veteran's Administration - I'm sure you're familiar with them.)

2) Poverty – Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
I'm sure you've heard the phrase "income inequality" - yeah, that's the thing that Obama is trying to fight, not increase. And incidentally, despite what Fox "News" want you to believe, the median household income in the United States has been increasing since midway through Obama's first term - you know, following the slide he inherited from the previous administration.

https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/2011/H09AR_2011.xls

3) Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.
Again, you really should avoid listening to Fox "News." U.S. GDP is up. Unemployment is down to 6.7 percent in February, and despite the current sag, the stock market has has been setting new records each quarter. Oh, and those terrible tax increases? Have you noticed that they didn't happen?

4) Gun Control– Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state
Oy. OK, name a gun law that Obama has pushed through. Just one. The NRA is reduced to chanting "you know he's going to do it!" over and over. And the suckers fall for it. Gun sales are up, Dad. Sorry.

5) Welfare – Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income)
Again, oy. This is the ignorant nonsense that social conservatives and rich entitled douchebags have been peddling since time immemorial. You don't believe me? In 1912, Hilaire Belloc argued that, while capitalism was harsh, any attempts to amend its defects through could only lead to the rise of what he calls the "Servile State". According to Belloc, this servile state resembles ancient slavery, in its reliance on the government solving problems instead of the force of society taking care of issues on their own.

Sound familiar? Despite that, and despite the fact that 20 years later, the Federal government started up this dreaded "welfare state," the American people still managed to win WWII. In fact, your generation, and mine, both grew from this evil abuse of taxpayer's money, which prevents people from dying of starvation in the middle of what your boy Hannity calls "the single greatest nation that God ever gave man on this earth."

6) Education – Take control of what people read and listen to – take control of what children learn in school.
So, now you're talking about "No Child Left Behind"? Wrong president there, Pops.

Please tell me where Obama has taken control of Fox "News." And then explain why this doesn't invalidate your argument.

7) Religion – Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools
Tell me one single thing that Obama has done to "remove God from government and schools," that wouldn't be done under any president, because it's the way the Constitution reads. (Treaty of Tripoli, 1797 - "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.")

Incidentally, if you're looking for examples of how wonderful life is under a religious government, look no farther than the Taliban.

8) Class Warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.
It wasn't Obama that gave all the money to the upper 1%. Again, that was Bush (look up "real estate bubble" - remember? That whole "Wall Street collapse" thing?). And the whole "class warfare" meme is getting pushed, once again, not by the White House, but by Fox News. Obama is trying to rebuild the middle class, not tear down society. It's the rich, self-important pricks with the multi-million dollar homes and and an elevator for their cars who are trying to turn it into a war.

You have really got to find a new source for your news, Dad. When you allow Rupert Murdoch to brainwash you, it doesn't lead to a good place.

Love you,
Bill

In case you're curious, those parts up above in boldface? Yeah, I just cut-and-pasted from the original. So, yes, green Comic Sans, with the first word in red. I just took pity on your eyes and didn't recreate it here.

The saddest part, though? Dad will take it in reasonably good grace. His wife, though, already doesn't like me. And this isn't going to do anything to improve that relationship.

Godwin's Law Redux

There is a constant drumbeat from the right comparing Obama to Hitler. I mean, let's ignore the fact that Obama's signature legislation is a method to ensure that everybody can go to a hospital when they're sick without ending up living out of their car. Because that's exactly the same as slaughtering six million Jews and attempting to take over Europe in a bloody campaign of destruction.

Yeah, let's ignore that. Instead, let's ask ourselves why every single time that somebody disagrees with a politician, it's become de rigueur to compare them to Hitler? Why is the litmus test for political arguments the ability to reduce your enemy to the level of the worst dictator in history? Last week, I pointed out an unintentional violation of Godwin's Law, but let's consider the issue a little, shall we?

Following World War One, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty included Article 231, which is commonly called "the guilt clause":

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Using this as a legal basis, Germany was forced to pay reparations to the rest of Europe. Unfortunately, Germany didn't think they'd lost the war - the German High Command told their citizens that the Army had never been beaten in the field, and the defeat was actually due to actions by civilians, particularly Jews, Socialists and Communists (the Dolchstosslegende, or "Stabbed-in-the-Back Legend").

That's right - Hitler didn't start the rumor that Jews were destroying the economy. Antisemitism was well-established in the German culture long before he was born.

So the Weimar Republic resisted the reparations, and defaulted on payments quite frequently. The French and Belgians, realizing that the Germans were able to pay and simply weren't, eventually invaded and occupied the Ruhr valley, which was the center of coal, iron and steel production in Germany.

Take this reduction in raw materials for the Germans and the resulting reduction in cash-flow, and add to it the fact that the German government funded a passive resistance movement among the citizens of the Ruhr by simply printing more money. This led to the famed hyper-inflation of post-WWI Germany.

Technically, the inflation started when the Kaiser decided to fund WWI by borrowing money instead of taxing his people and using his own fortune: the value of the German mark fell from 4 to 9 per US dollar. But the war ended in 1919; by November 1923, the American dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks. Or in more concrete terms, in 1919 a loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, a loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks.

This was the situation when Adolph Hitler rose into power. During the course of his leadership, he brought his people back from the brink of ruin and ensured they could eat.

People want for life to be simple. They want their enemies to wholly evil, so that there's no question that "destroying them" is a bad thing. The reductive power of the human mind wants those we disagree with to have no redeeming features. Homophobes want gays to practice pedophilia and beastiality. Radical conservatives want liberals to be fascists and totalitarian dictators. Radical liberals want conservatives to be inhuman monsters who laugh as children starve in the streets.

The reality is that people are more complex than that. But to see that, to understand the forces that drive someone, is to understand that perhaps evil is not something simple. Perhaps evil and good are in all of us. That bad things are done by good people, and good things are done by bad people, and the world isn't the simple place we want it to be.

Would you like to see the most frightening picture of Adolph Hitler ever taken?

Hitler, holding hands with a little girl and walking in a park. Hitler loved children. He loved animals: he was a confirmed vegetarian and was opposed to vivisection.

Were you aware that Eva Braun took home movies?


Hitler was a human being. It challenges your worldview: he should be a monster, pounding on desks and ordering people to their deaths. But he lived, he loved, he laughed, he played with children.

He also destroyed much of Europe, threw the world into war, and established concentration camps where 11 million people were killed.

Perhaps "good" and "evil" aren't the simple concepts that some people want them to be.

Dear Josh

As a side note, I honestly intended to send this out. Unfortunately, I found 6 Joshua Bostons in Kentucky, two of whom were in Louisville, and I don't randomly spam people just because they MIGHT be the right person. If anybody finds an actual physical (or email) address for him, please advise. (Just like in school, be sure to show your work.)

So, just after Christmas, an ex-marine named Joshua Boston posted the following open letter to Dianne Feinstein on CNN's attempt at social media, CNN iReport.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government's right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma'am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America. I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.
Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

There. Now you have the backstory, in case you missed it.
_____________________

Mr Boston,

You don't know me, but, just like you, I was in the military. Unlike you, I did more than just two tours - I retired after 21 years. On the other hand, I only had two vacations in the Middle East, to your four. So, things even out, I guess.

I read your "open letter" on the CNN website with some interest. I get the general impression that you don't support the idea of gun control: if I'm wrong about that, please tell me.

Oh, and congratulations on learning to use Spellcheck: so many of your fellow lunatics can't manage even that much. But next letter, maybe you should see about getting somebody to help you with the punctuation. I know that's hard for a Marine (or even an ex-Marine), but we all need help sometimes.

I could argue with you on the subject of gun control - it's actually not that difficult to refute every one of the NRA's talking points. The hardest part of the debate is keeping you guys from yelling; you seem to feel that your arguments are more valid when they're louder.

Now, since then, you've become something of an internet celebrity. Your letter has gone viral. You've appeared on Fox News several times, you've been interviewed by Piers Morgan (that one seems particularly popular), and there seem to be people lighting candles and incense under your picture. You're another Internet celebrity. Enjoy it while it lasts, I guess - those 15 minutes die out pretty fast.

I'll tell you the truth, though: I'm not impressed. To be honest, other marines aren't impressed. But I'm not going to try to argue the Second Amendment with you, despite the fact that even the most extreme right-wing Supreme Court justice has said that it's not as all-encompassing as you seem to think.

I could even argue history with you. You seem to ignore the first half of the second amendment, because the full text is "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

See, back then, every town had a militia. Where we've got the National Guard, they had the local militia. And when they said "well-regulated," they meant it. They had volumes of regulations covering the behavior of the militia.

The founders had a simple reason for curbing this right: Quakers and other religious pacifists were opposed to bearing arms, and wished to be exempt from an obligation that could be made incumbent on all male citizens at the time.

When the Second Amendment is discussed today, we tend to think of those “militias” as just a bunch of ordinary guys with guns, empowering themselves to resist authority when and if necessary. Nothing could be further from the founders’ vision.

Militias were tightly controlled organizations legally defined and regulated by the individual colonies before the Revolution and, after independence, by the individual states. Militia laws ran on for pages and were some of the lengthiest pieces of legislation in the statute books. States kept track of who had guns, had the right to inspect them in private homes and could fine citizens for failing to report to a muster.

(Saul Cornell, author of "A Well-Regulated Militia:The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America")

Yeah, but, see, that kind of argument doesn't do much for you. Logic has left the building. The historical reasons for the Second Amendment don't matter so much as your ability to take out your automatic weapons and blow the shit out of everything in the neighborhood, does it?

I just want to point out a couple of little things you should consider, outside of the Freudian glories of firing off your boom-stick.

First off, Senator Feinstein doesn't carry her gun everywhere. She just happens to own one. That's not hypocritical: she isn't trying to ban all guns everywhere - she wants some simple, common-sense laws to be instituted. Are you aware that out of the 23 executive orders the president just signed into law (yes, they're legal and they're constitutional, despite what you'd like to believe), one of them made it legal once again for the CDC to look into gun violence?

Yes, did you know that the NRA had gotten some of their trained Congressional poodles to make it illegal to even examine one of the 15 most common causes of death in the US? That's how afraid they are of reality.

But, of course you'd see Senator Feinstein's actions in the worst possible light: after all, she's a woman, and I hate to break this to you, but you're sexist.

Yeah, I know. You'd like to deny it: either to call it a lie, or to attack the messenger (it's a pretty common tactic: "liberals always call conservatives racist," as if simply denying it makes it less true).

I mean, it's pretty obvious just from your choice of words. "I will not have some woman... tell me I may not have one," or "I am the man who keeps you free... I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned."

Those are your own words. But that's just subtext, so maybe that's too subtle for you. Let's look at some of your other words. "I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government's right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me..."

That's adorable. Paranoid, but adorable. So I suppose that your car doesn't have a license plate, right?

Let me explain what you've done with your idiotic little rant. You made this statement on a nationally-read website. You told the American public that you weren't going to comply with the law. Now, hypothetically, some members of that same public might just work for the government. And they might just file your little letter away for future consideration.

And then, later, a couple of people might just knock on your door. With pictures of you at a shooting range, firing an unlicensed weapon. Since you aren't listed as owning, say, an AR-15, that could very well be considered "probable cause." And then you get a citation: even then, the government would be unlikely to confiscate your guns - they'd just take them as evidence, and you'd end up with a fine.

Of course, if you still didn't register your weapons, then they would be perfectly within their rights not to release the weapons back into your custody. Which may seem like "confiscation" to you, but it's something that they wouldn't be able to do if you'd just complied with the law.

I'm not saying that this is a likely scenario. I'm just pointing out the obvious flaw in your logic. The most likely way that your stubborn ignorance would turn around to bite you would be if you ended up arrested on, say, drug charges, or suspicion of being a terrorist: some charge that resulted in a search warrant against you.

Licensing your guns doesn't put you on a "confiscation list," despite what you read in The Turner Diaries. It just keeps you from getting further charges filed against you when the guns turn up in your possession.

But mostly, I'd like to thank you. When people see the immediate and illogical overreaction of people like you, to the mere suggestion of guns getting at least as much regulation as a car? It highlights the insanity of certain parts of the American public. And maybe suggests to them that there are some people who probably shouldn't be allowed access to firearms. People like you, Josh.

So thanks for your efforts to get some common-sense gun laws put into place.

Bill Minnich
TSgt, United States Air Force
1983-2004

A small addendum...

Speaking as a veteran with two tours of the Middle East, I think I should mention just one small point to our friends on the right wing.

Republican Logic

Now, remember, children. Here's how it works. This is something you should make fun of.

This is something you should not make fun of. Ever.

Two terms for you to look up: "active sport" and "riding bitch." (Incidentally, don't make fun of their ridiculous, elitist equestrian activities, either. It makes them cranky.)

Are we clear on that now?

Zen and the art of dismissal

So I hear these two guys talking on the radio. It's a conversation on the Amateur Radio 20 meter band, so half the world could be listening if conditions are right.

"I heard one of these protesters said he was there because 'Capitalism was taking over Wall Street' -- like it hasn't been Capitalist for over two hundred years! What an idiot!"

Well I'm assuming this guy isn't an economist any more than he might be a historian, and I'm assuming he got the information about what the "typical" loony-left and ignorant protesters are from some artisanal propaganda source like Fox News.

Yes, of course, there were protesters baring their breasts and preforming other charming acts having little to do with constructive criticism of laissez-faire Capitalism. While I'm the last person to discourage such acts, I'm also the last person to believe that this kind of New Yorky opportunistic revelry has anything to do with the reasons more qualified critics like Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz would lend support by their presence: reasons having to do with Wall Street practices, their relationship to the market crash, the credit crunch and the dire state of the world economy -- subjects the people who script and sculpt the news would rather mock, would rather have you mock, than discuss intelligently.

For someone who suffered through the late 1960's as an adult, the techniques political enterprises use to dismiss well grounded movements hold no novelty. I remember quite well how anyone openly questioning the benefits and reasons for maintaining an unwinnable war in Southeast Asia was told to "get a job" and had his personal hygiene questioned as well. Easier to dismiss someone, albeit clad in Brooks Brothers attire and obviously gainfully employed, as a silly, radical and stupid "hippie" than to answer disturbing questions as why killing peasants, bombing millions and stifling free elections was preventing the 'lights of freedom from going out in America' as was wrongly claimed by the Right. Then, as now, the real struggle was to keep the lights of reason off and it was fought with the same kind of smugly simplistic and fatuous fallacies the powerful always use to crucify the good.

But the dishonest selection of unrepresentative examples and illuminating them as "typical" is ancient and not the property of right wing extremists. It's the sort of thing our foul species does to advance our cults and parties that want to keep us in squalor and ignorance and the occupation of Wall Street isn't about the irrational or Communist inspired hatred of freedom or free markets, as you know, or you wouldn't have read this far. It's about corruption and the lack of rules and oversight that promotes private exploitation of free markets to the detriment of all. The occupation of Wall Street is just another station of the cross where the sidewalks are filled with mockery and abuse.

That unwitting clowns are flopping about in over-sized shoes, honking horns and mocking, is inevitable, given the well-fed smugness of the stupid. Their invisible rulers are very good at making them eager participants in their degradation and suffering; but failure isn't inevitable. It's tempting for old-timers like me to opt out of the circus, but perhaps there's hope, unlikely as it may seem, that enough people can be made to see how they're protecting the practices of the looters, pillagers and vandals on Wall Street and in Washington to do something about it. There's hope, but I'm not yet ready to bet on it.

You want some santorum on your toast?

It seems to me, anyway, that if somebody had the "Google problem" that Santorum does, he might just back off a little. You know, stop being the most outspoken gay basher outside of the Westboro Baptist Church, maybe. (Especially now that Dan Savage is threatening to make it worse.)

Especially as we approach the 2012 election season, the frothy mixture would love to change the results you get when you google his name, but he really doesn't have that option (short of hiring a mob of hackers to roam the internet, chopping out all references to his name anywhere near any mention of anal sex, anyway).

But, considering the nature of his problem, don't you think it would be smart to avoid certain actions? For example, wouldn't it be smart for him not to offer to hand out free samples of Santorum Jelly at the Ames Straw Poll?

It's just a thought.
__________

Update: (8/14/11) Oh, for Christ's sake!

The price of propaganda

OK, let's be real.

What is the effect of years of anti-Muslim bigotry being spewed, screaming about "sharia law is taking over!" and "they won't stop until every Christian is dead!" and every other ignorant statement puked up by Pam Geller and her ilk?



A blond Norwegian Christian kills other Norwegian non-Muslims on the theory that he was fighting a war against the encroachment of Islam.

But that was an easy one, right?

OK, then. What is the effect of years of people shouting "baby killer!" and "abortion is murder!" and trying to defund or destroy Planned Parenthood at every opportunity?



Some toothless inbreeder tries to firebomb a Planned Parenthood clinic, apparently not aware that diesel fuel is a terrible accelerant, as it does not explode and has a flashpoint of 143°F. Which is why he caused minimal damage.

Oh, and diesel is currently more expensive than gasoline.

Oh, and one more thing: that particular Planned Parenthood clinic didn't perform abortions!

One wonders how humanity manages to survive, when they seem to be racing headlong back toward the feces-flinging stage.

We lie, you decide

Keep saying it until it's true - that's Fox's other motto, the one you'll only hear in the board room, but you'll see it in action every day. President Obama is a far left socialist, repeats Roger Ailes to the Daily Beast. That's why his trade mission to the far East was an abject failure -- he's just too socialist for China.

"He just has a different belief system than most Americans”

said Ailes to Howard Kurtz. He's different, he's extreme, he's foreign. That's why he was elected by a majority of Americans, I guess. That's why his ratings are higher than Reagan's at the same point. He's the same, he's a conservative corporatist influenced by big business, he's no different. That's what so many liberal and non-liberal Americans are saying about him. Sorry Roger, you can lie report all you want, but we've decided.

Which Obama are we talking about?

" I literally never heard an Obama speech that didn’t blame Bush.”

says the Fox chairman. I guess I'm not listening carefully, but that's literally a lie and why isn't Bush to blame for what Bush did and why hasn't Obama come out and said it? Who else pissed away the surplus, spent the trillions shocking and awe-ing third world countries and was at the helm during the largest redistribution of wealth in our history? History blames Bush. The facts blame Bush and facts are what's missing in Ailes' endless accusations.

President Obama

“had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with."

What Socialism? The French and Germans are Socialists and Capitalists and they pay enormously higher taxes than we do. Under the current administration our taxes are at historic lows. Trying to reform health care in a manner far less socialist than any other country? Restoring a tax bracket to less that Reagan gave us? Asking for much less TARP money than George Bush, making it more accountable and lending money to Americans that's being repaid with interest? Being too much in cahoots with Wall Street, beholden to corporate interests, giving us a large middle class tax cut? What Socialism, you lying son of a bitch?

Sorry Roger, you're going to have to say it a lot louder and longer if you want to make it true and if you wanted to be something in the same galaxy as honesty, you'd just come out and use the N word. That would be even more of a boost to your oily profits, wouldn't it?

Loonies, Moonies and Republicans - oh my!

I remember reading Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon many years ago. It's about an old Soviet apparatchik fallen from grace and thrown into one of Stalin's prisons to await some miserable and sordid fate in the Lublyanka cellars. It came to mind because there's a mention in it of group photos of the Old Guard, the early, idealistic, committed Communists out to make a better world and how one by one, the official photos on the office wall were replaced by newer ones with certain people missing, certain others added.

It was long before digital photography and before it made it so easy for unscrupulous, devious, dishonest, America hating, indecent propagandists to produce photos of John Kerry and Jane Fonda, for instance, or Barack Obama saluting improperly -- and do it far better than old Ivan in the back room could with a razor and some glue. It is far too easy for the kind of trolls who work for right wing rags owned by foreign born lunatics like the Washington Times to produce photos of Elena Kagan in a black Turban so as to insinuate perhaps, and without any sense of journalistic integrity, that she's a terrorist supporter as well as a probably homosexual cross dresser and part of an "ominous plot" to insinuate Sharia Law into this country.

It's far too easy for an American public so insanely desperate, so grossly, childishly irresponsible that they will get into bed with the Moonies just to have one more idiotic piece of dung to fling at the opposition. It's so easy for a public who never reads to miss the parallels between what they do and what the people they claim to hate did. It's so easy for an infantile America to dismiss someone for having Communist cooties because they simply haven't the brains to do much more and certainly can't be expected to discuss her actual qualifications and record.

It's so hard for a person who likes to see people get their just desserts when those people are the country he so wishes to be proud of.

Believing is seeing.

"I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings. We're winning"

-Roger Ailes, Chairman, Fox Television Stations Group -


It's remarkable and a bit sad that media outlets like MSNBC or NPR or the New York Times are so easily dismissed by the very people their job it is to expose as charlatans, liars, thieves, hypocrites and enemies of Democracy. There are so many possibilities to disembowel the people who are in turn disemboweling our values and our history and our nationhood and the very stability of our country, but bundled into a package like bad loans and labeled as Liberally biased, the non-Fox media simply give in, afraid to do what anyone who knows how to use Youtube can do they ignore the lies and emulate the deceivers or turn to celebrity gossip.

But of course in a different way, it's just as sad to see people like Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity shown as naked and pathetic as the newly clothed emperor by one of the only news programs with nothing to lose by telling the truth: The Daily Show. I had tears in my eyes Thursday night as the scrolling text of President Obama's Nuclear Position Report was followed by the Foxed up report clothed as a conversation between the very god of hypocrisy and America's own Rasputin. Using someone's own recorded words against him makes it very hard, in theory to drown out the truth with the usual brass band of Obamahate or simply continue to lie and deny with brass balls. why sad? because it doesn't matter, because the people who want to believe won't willingly leave their fantasy faith and view the real, sad world and because there are a lot of them and because they're angry as hell that Democracy overturned their perceived entitlement. As with evolution deniers, no amount of proof is enough even to raise the terrible spectre of doubt. For reasonable people seeing is believing, for Teabaggers, Fox Folk and the vermin who write viral e-mails, it's the other way around.

Yes, indeed, The United States pledges never to make or threaten a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear enemy save for the provision that a chemical or biological attack could exempt an enemy from that pledge, but within seconds we see Gingrich saying that we're endangered because a chemical or biological attack could not provoke a nuclear response. Within seconds we hear Hannity affirm "yes, that's what he said."

It's always quite an experience to see someone look you in the face and lie when you have proof positive that's just what it is. One feels betrayed, embarrassed, angry: one never wants to trust or listen to that person again. But not if you need that lie. Not if your entire life revolves around that lie.

Will MSNBC or CNN or the networks address the Fox crew's responsibility to report the truth? Would they risk running such dramatic proof that their competition is no more honest or reliable than the Legendary Iraqi Defense Minister? What will they say about Fox's assertions that our widely radical president will put us all in danger by reducing our huge stockpile of nukes, some over 40 years old, by a third, or by looking forward to a world without them? Will they, like Jon Stewart simply run clips of Ronald Reagan telling the world that he looks forward to a world without nuclear weapons and that we should reduce the count by one third as a first step? No, they won't. Reagan will remain right and Obama will, by being exactly the same be irrevocably wrong -- and a far left radical liberal trying to weaken our defenses. Truth is irrelevant.

According to Newt Gingrich, President Obama believes that words are a substitute for reality: he's referring to words the President never said, or words that the Hero Reagan also said. His smirking riff, only meant to perfume a pointless smear and to deflect notice that this is precisely what Newt is doing: knowingly lying about the President, creating a false substitute for reality and knowingly trying to enrage people against the elected government. As Roger Ailes said, they're about ratings.

Who in the "Liberal Media" is going to expose him as a seditious insurgent? Who on CNN is going to put together clips of McCain calling himself a Maverick and denying he ever called himself a Maverick? Clips of McCain telling us to avoid extremists like Jerry Falwell and then praising Jerry Falwell? McCain espousing views and then calling Obama an extremist for agreeing? Only an entertainment show, a fake news show. You won't often see such stunning journalism on a real news program or in a real paper or magazine, because it's quick, because it doesn't allow the concocted "balance" of dignifying a baseless lie as "another point of view," because you can't speculate and expatiate and flap your jaws hysterically about it all day and all night. That's not what journalism is any more. Truth isn't even what truth is any more and Journalism isn't journalism, it's entertainment, it's a Roman circus and we're not the lions.

The unbearable luxury of truth

"and how much more falsity is still necessary to me that I may therewith always reassure myself regarding the luxury of my truth."

-Friedrich Nietzsche-
________________

Quick, hurry, watch this video right away before "they" pull it. Watch it before "they zap it off the internet" because it's a video of Obama admitting that he grew up with Muslims and is "one of them." Watch carefully and you can see where it was edited. It's the third one in my in-box this week and the week's not over. Videos about impaling Christian babies on the "Scimitar of Muslim justice." Obama in a Ukrainian porn video -- hurry, before it gets pulled as part of his obvious Marxist agenda! Even a dog knows better than to swallow anything from Obama, but we swallow the slander with infinite glee. In YouTube we trust and ain't it fun to hate Obama?

How many thousands of years ago was it that merely saying President Bush was embarrassing was enough to ruin your career and get you excoriated on Fox News, and reading the names of the fallen in Iraq was an outrageous attempt to criticize the president that bordered on treason? Go back and look -- quickly -- before history is rewritten.

UnitedHealth, the largest US health insurer by market capitalization, posted earnings of $944 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from $726 million in 2008, it was announced this morning. That's a 30% increase -- what recession?

Last week I got a bill for over $700 for some routine blood work. Good thing I can afford Blue Cross at $1500 a month with a $2500 deductible, but still, I pay in far more than I get out of it seeing as that's how private insurance works and how they need to make 30 or 40 percent to keep the stockholders fat. Good thing for UnitedHealth if the Sleaze Lords defeat "Obama's" Marxist agenda!

America hates the President, America hates the courts, hates the Congress, hates the Government. America doesn't trust science, doesn't trust educated people, doesn't trust Liberals. Americans believe they're smart, that their opinions are valid; their superstitions, their fears, their prejudices and that they're being oppressed by everyone but those who get rich from their suffering. America trusts anonymous e-mails, Rush Limbaugh and YouTube. Americans love comfort, security and luxury, especially if they have more of it than their neighbors. Of course paying for it with cash is Communism, but what's a little falsity? It's free and abundant -- and it's fun!

Let only one flower bloom

According to the Foxspeak dictionary, a school of thought is defined as a scheme, usually by Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch that they wish to attribute to a broad segment of the public. People say, or Some people are saying are alternate disguises for propaganda. If there really is a school of thought that believes cutting the minimum wage will be good for workers, I would like to see its accreditation and I suspect it's a school where employers such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart are heavily represented.

"One school of thought says lowering the minimum wage will actually create more jobs,"

pronounced anchortwit Juliet Huddy from the Fox News Podium in an attempt to give credit to the idea if not to the school of one promoting it.

As Raw Story describes in detail, Fox reduces the entire concept of a minimum wage to "social justice" which sounds sufficiently close to Socialism that they deemed it unnecessary to point out any contrary ideas, no matter how credible. Blind slogans and doctrines being so much easier to sell than truth in all its complexity -- or justice for that matter.

At one point I was foolish enough to think that the failure of doctrine driven economic, social and military policies would be an embarrassment to Fox and its friends, but it seems now that with America down and out, the opportunity to kick us while we're down is irresistible. It seems that their dream of building a new, invincible corporate oligarchy from the ruins of our country, is the only school of thought that isn't a strategic fraud.

Fox in the hen house

What the hell Barack Obama was thinking when he appointed Dana Perino to anything at all, I don't know. Raw Story says, with a bit of mockery, that she's staying true to her convictions but although that sort of thing is so often described as virtue, I have to remember that never changing one's mind and never changing the subject is the mark of the fanatic -- to put it politely. What was he thinking when he appointed a hostile and professional anti-regulatory, anti-government propagandist to the Broadcasting Board of Governors? She may cackle like a biddy, but she's a Fox in the hen house for sure.

I haven't heard the hortatory "there's a war on" trope for a while now, but here she is again on Fox News trying to use it to generate that same community spirit we had 65 years ago when there really was a war on that had something to do with national security and not another illegitimate, unnecessary and degenerating quagmire having little to do with anything but the ego of a president who never won anything fairly in his life. I have to wonder if the obscenely perky Ms. Perino actually knows enough about WW II to make a valid comparison.

You'll remember of course that last year as white house deputy press secretary, it came out that she'd never heard of the Cuban missile crisis, but with the arrogance only someone with the strength of conviction of the ignorant can have, she's chastising her boss by saying he shouldn't play golf "when there's a war on." and when unemployment is up - like it was under St. Reagan the infallible. He shouldn't keep the generals waiting she says, not remembering that if Kennedy hadn't keep his generals waiting, Florida might still be radioactive.

Funny stuff anyway, coming from a mouth that used so recently to tell us not to criticize the president when there's a war on. Disgusting stuff when that particular president set and still holds the US record for number of vacation days taken, morning runs, weeks accumulating into months of brush cutting and evenings passing out on the couch -- war or no war. Was Obama hoping to plant an ally of some sort in the Fox den? Sorry, you can feed it like a dog, but a Fox is a Fox.

"In fact, I think President Obama has already played golf more than President Bush did in eight years. I don't begrudge him for playing golf but you have to understand when you have the B roll of the video that shows the president playing golf while there is a 10.2% unemployment rate, while his senators are basically having to twist arms in order to get this party line vote, while KSM is headed to New York City for trials, while we have the Gitmo detainees possibly coming to Illinois — they have to understand that people could look at that and say, 'Oh, and by the way General McChrystal has been waiting 86 days for a decision about Afghanistan."

She twittered to Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends infamy. This, from someone who told us that global warming would be good because fewer people would get colds and who doesn't remember how unemployment went from just over 6% to as high as it is now under St. Reagan the faultless.

No, it was OK for Bush to bicycle, jog, cut brush and pass out in front of the TV while hundreds of thousands died and millions were made homeless, It wasn't golf, that elitist game. It was OK for Ronald to sleep all afternoon when unemployment was 10.5% and there was "a war on" in Granada but Obama should not have a break, or get a break either -- because he's Obama.

For someone who clearly remembers the way the warhawks went after Dwight Eisenhower for dithering and playing golf instead of addressing the missile gap that never really was, it's amusing and infuriating at the same time, since his greatest strength, in my opinion, was his resistance to being rushed or bullied by the Generals. It's also amusing to remember that Lyndon Johnson played golf when a far bigger and deadlier war was "on" and you didn't hear much about it from the support-any war-Republicans.

All and all, she's just another yipping Fox Friend, with the annoying self confidence of those born yesterday. She belongs with Fox and along with Malkin and Coulter and giggling Glenn, not working for a government she hates.

What the hell was he thinking?

Kiss our American asses, world!

I haven't posted in a while, having been preparing for and then recovering from a rather ill-conceived and harrowing nautical excursion over the weekend. I was hoping to be far away and in another country and thus to avoid what has become, like the War on Christmas, another contrived anti-American battle. But the sea pays no attention to our ambitions and acts of arrogance and there was no escape for the old captain this time.

The war on Memorial Day is a bit different, but no less insidious than our religious wars. We're long since used to being chastised for our lack of piety in not spending the event in self flagellation and the worship of the American messianic mission that some would pass off as appreciation for those who have died in Military service. We've never been asked however, at least not to my knowledge, to express our ritualized regret for the premature deaths of the 60 to 70 million who died in WW II alone, but only for the US soldiers who won it without assistance from the unappreciative world -- and I've long suspected that the War on Memorial Day has become the sole reason for the holiday itself.

If it were an expression of the wish that no more people would die in wars, it would be more likely to please the dead, could they be aware of it, but what it is supposed to be about has been, at least to those who write viral e-mails, a celebration of soldiering; the glory, the rituals and all the self worship and vainglorious bluster America can muster. It's the day of unmitigated, unalloyed arrogance, unrestrained by fact or reason and often not even by sanity or decency.

Of course in these latter days, when we have a President whose rationality and lack of shamanistic display require that we simply make shit up in order to preserve our military/religious complex, the War on Memorial Day is become the war that is Memorial day. It's now a war against Obama and Obama's honest assessment of what we have done, what we are doing and what we should do beyond waving flags, setting ourselves up as the world's sole and only begotten savior, puking up beer and burgers and getting discounts on foreign made goods at the big box stores.

Apologize for what? asks the e-mail. What follows is a sequence of pictures of US military cemeteries in Europe all entitled "We apologize." It ends with

"Apologize to no one. Remind those of our sacrifice and don't confuse arrogance with leadership. And we have to watch an American elected leader who apologizes to Europe and the Middle East that our country is "arrogant"! HOW MANY FRENCH, DUTCH, ITALIANS, BELGIANS AND BRITS ARE BURIED ON OUR SOIL, DEFENDING US AGAINST OUR ENEMIES?? WE DON'T ASK FOR PRAISE ... BUT WE HAVE ABSOULUTELY [sic] NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE!!"

No, it's not just the typical American arrogance about the world needing to kiss our feet every day. It's not just an illustration of our stunning ignorance of history, it's just another rabble rousing attack on a president who had the honesty to say that we have often of late been perceived as arrogant and we've often been unfair to those who disagree and that others have likewise been unfair to us. It's actually one of the best things Obama has said, in my opinion, and they're not going to let him get way with such heresy; not while there remains one pitchfork wielding and furiously ignorant psycho-patriot to arouse.

American Patriotism is a large and dense forest in which more scoundrels than we can count have taken refuge. I'm afraid there isn't enough Agent Orange and enough napalm to force them out or do away with them. I'm afraid that soon enough, Memorial Day will be the day some of use remember that there used to be an America that stood for something; something that contained a lot of good before the bastards flushed it down the toilet.

The most ____ president in history.

"Be warned - - Obama has started!!!!" screams the e-mail.

The boundary between hyperbole and hysteria may be blurry and undefined, but those who make a career of ferrying the lost souls across that murky river are calm, cool and professional and know just what they are doing: delivering us all to hell.

The smallest and most obscure incident will be elevated to a breathless diatribe against the pandaemon of targets in the Republican shooting gallery and so when, after a series of accidents, one fatal, involving Fort Campbell soldiers owning private firearms and living off-base, approximately 110 out of 29,000 of them were asked by a company commander for information about what kind of weapons they owned, with the objective of providing proper training in their use. The letter was rescinded almost immediately.

With blinding speed the letter was scanned and embedded in a bogus and highly irate letter about how "the most anti-firearm president in history" was trying to disarm our own military.

"The big hush, hush is not only to take away our missile defenses, but Obama is going to disarm the public as well. He is starting with the military and then the public. The country will then be totally defenseless."

How quickly we move from memo to madness. It goes on and on about Liberty and a "Free people" and how "something really nasty is blowing in the wind here." Indeed it is, or at least in the electronic wind and it smells Republican.

"It just seems a little coincidental to me that within 90 days: the most anti-firearm President in history is inaugurated, some of the nastiest anti-firearm laws are put on the table in Washington"

Do I need to point out that to be a coincidence, two events have to be true?

I could almost hear the thud of it arriving in my in-box -- or perhaps the thud was the sonic boom caused by the Commander of Charlie Company transmogrifying into maniacal Barak Obama.

Obama, formerly "the most far-left Liberal" in the Senate is now confounding the Liberal wing of his party with his decidedly not far-left Liberal views on many things, but no matter. Even if he proves not to put further gun control legislation on the table, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Rahm Immanuel are waiting, like cartridges in a magazine and any one of them can be the next "most ____ in history." Like Leggo Blocks, they're interchangeable.

Now I wonder with what blinding speed some troll will decide that I am very angry and therefore demented and from that go on to point out that all Democrats are not only hate filled, but deranged hate mongers; perhaps the most deranged in history. I'm counting the seconds.

POLITICAL SLOGANS: PART ONE

Election Season 2008 has yielded a bumper crop of lies and deceptions that have choked out every plant in the garden. Worse than weeds, the current debate puts kudzu to shame. The word 'weed' may begin with the letter 'w' but deceptive politics certainly did not begin with George W. Bush, nor will it end with John "The Same" McCain.  Fortunately, there are online tools to help us whack through the thicket of lies:

FactCheck.Org monitors the accuracy of representations made by politicians in media advertising, debates, speeches, interviews, and press releases. It bills itself as a “consumer advocate" whose aim is to identify deception and reduce voter confusion.

Media Matters monitors the major news outlets - broadcast, cable, radio, and the Internet - for false claims and misinformation. If you are looking for truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, skip CNN and Faux News and go directly to FactCheck.Org or Media Matters.

My purpose here is not to rehash the latest lies and deceptions. Why cover the same ground when there are legions of experts who do a credible job. Instead, my purpose is to examine the language of crafting political slogans, the one constant that runs through every election cycle, the scam for all seasons.

I start with WYSIWYG, a term borrowed from the science of computer visualization. Pronounced “Wizzy Wig,” it means: “What You See Is What You Get.” In other words, what you see on your computer screen is supposed to look like the output on a printed page. The term has several variations:

WYSIWYM (“Wizzy Whim”) - What You See Is What You Mean

WYSINWYG (“Wizzy Not Wig”) - What You See Is Not What You Get

WYSIWYNG (“Wizzy Wing”) - What You See Is What You'll Never Get

I apply these terms to the art of political sloganeering for obvious reasons. What does the political slogan really mean? Is there a hidden agenda? Are there imbedded code words that may mean one thing to one voter and something else to another?  After the election has been decided and a winner declared, did we really get what we thought we saw, or did we end up with different output?  A few recent real-world examples come to mind:

Compassionate Conservative - Is this slogan meant to convey a “Mr. Nice Guy” image, or is it simply “sugarcoating, an empty phrase to make traditional conservatism sound more appealing to moderate voters?” Would Mr. Nice Guy really want to privatize your social security and remove the social safety net? I would argue that the slogan is a ruse, an example of “Wizzy Not Wig.”

I am a uniter, not a divider – On the surface, this slogan suggests an appeal to bipartisanship but, in practice, it means the opposite: Divide and conquer using wedge politics. For Democrats who crossed party lines, this slogan has come to mean: “I will take your vote now and betray you later.” Shall we call this an example of “Wizzy Wing.”

Tax Relief – Here is a modern iteration of an old Roman concept, panem et circenses, meaning “bread and circus.” In practice, tax relief has resulted in an explosion of public debt and a massive transfer of wealth from the middle and working classes to the corporate elite thus furthering an already high level of economic inequality. In exchange for a little cash in their pockets, voters take the bait and act against their own economic self-interest.  A promise of tax relief is a Mephistophelian “Wizzy Not Wig.”

Judicial Activism – Conservatives accuse liberal judges of usurping the power of the legislature by deciding cases based on personal conviction. In fact, judicial activism exists in the eye of the beholder. Last year, the conservative Roberts court overturned decades of established law covering anti-trust, free speech, reproductive rights, and race … prompting Justice Stephen Breyer to say: "Rarely in the history of the law have so few undone so much so quickly." During his confirmation hearing before Congress, Roberts claimed to honor and respect the concept of legal precedence known as stare decicis. Clearly, his assurance was a “Wizzy Wing” hum dinger.

The above examples illustrate a point: A well-crafted political slogan serves several masters – sometimes appealing to one voting block while trying to assuage, or not offend, another. Its purpose is not necessarily to communicate the clear intent of the candidate, but to obfuscate, or sometimes give a contradictory impression. Slogans stir the emotions – anger, fear, comfort, and hope. Sometimes their purpose is to mask a hidden agenda. In any event, sloganeering is never about WYSIWYG. Politicians hurl slogans to win elections, and there is often a surprise after the candidate takes office.

What concerns me most of all is that our side of the political divide belongs to the WYSIWYM School of Political Discourse. We tend to say what we mean and mean what we say without art or guile or hidden motives. One consequence of our naivety is that we have been losing the language wars to conservatives for a very long time. Our candidates have not yet fully grasped the power of short, pithy slogans that resonate with voters.

We also have a tendency to let conservative sloganeering stand unchallenged. We need to expose the vacuous and dangerous jingoism. It should also be noted that repetitive sloganeering imprints itself on the national consciousness. Once the slogan and the conservative brand are firmly entrenched in the minds of voters, the damage has been done. Invasive weeds have taken over the garden.

In my view, every civics class should include a lesson on propaganda techniques so future citizens may become more discerning consumers of political noise - and less likely to be deceived by demagogic appeals.

Please look for Part Two before the next Blue Moon. Meanwhile, I welcome your comments and suggestions.