They Hate You- but You Knew That

Quit whining and get over it.

Of course, if the Tea Party wins the Congress in '10 and the Preznitcy in '12, it will be Blackwater/ Xe/ whatever they're calling themselves "policing" the streets.

You think hippie punching is bad when Joe Biden mocks you? Just wait 'till the 'Merikan Taliban starts knocking your teeth out. Literally.

Any idiot who refrains from voting DINOcrat deserves what they get. Not that Big Picture policy-wise they'll be much better than the Rethuglicans. But people are much less likely to get tazed to death. Literally.

And I do realize we are getting the juice under they DINOcrats; it's going to be that much worse with batshit crazy neo-nazis in charge.

I am far more cynical than Ian. I think the people that own this country aren't going to let it go. I think they think they have enough guns, and bravos, and non-lethal weapons, and disinformation mills, and control over every aspect of life to force what they want down your throat.

Just let them get in power again. They'll make Bu$hie look like Carter.

disconnectivity

The Editors at The New York Pravda just don't seem to get it.

...A midnight filing by the Obama administration on Friday, asking a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit because of the so-called state secrets doctrine, again raises a troubling question. Why do the White House and Justice Department continue to invoke this severe legal tool essentially as prior administrations have used it, in the face of a considerable body of opinion that it has been abused and should be significantly reformed?

Could it have something to do with the fact that once the detainee policy is opened for public, it will in turn lead to a host of other issues regarding the Excellent Adventures of our national $ecurity state being examined by the main$tream, likely leading to the prosecution of most of the Department of Defense, the Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton administration, and the Nobel Laureate's administration for war crimes?

Now that would be another historical first: the first Peace Prize winner on trial at the Hague. Call him kid dy-no-mite.

Joe Biden is not getting it, big time. No whining, now, Joe. Neither are his Congressional Company DINOcratic cohorts.

...Many major donors, in fact, seem to be drawing a distinction between continuing to support left-leaning policy organizations and other institutions, and giving money to political groups focused on this election...

This is what happens when you give excellent, inspiring progressive political speeches and end up voting for policies as Poppy Bu$h tells you anyway.

And speaking of Poppy, his sockpuppet Robert Gates seems to have forgotten the lessons of Viet Nam at all levels- or maybe he just thinks his $ecurity state and propaganda machine is big enough to blow away the turbulence?

The United States is at risk of developing a cadre of military leaders who are cut off politically, culturally and geographically from the population they are sworn to protect, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told an audience at Duke University on Wednesday night...

Even after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Gates said, “in the absence of a draft, for a growing number of Americans, service in the military, no matter how laudable, has become something for other people to do.”

I like that, at risk.

Yes, Mr. Gates, agitate for that draft. Hubris does complete its own circle, doesn't it? Or is it that simple?

Ever since Cheney did his first sleepover in the bunker under the White House, those who would rule us have been prepping for major civil unrest in the United States, knowing that would allow them to invoke the martial law they have such wet dreams about.

It's all just a matter of timing and implementation.

I stand by my first principles here: Chaos is the Plan.

the Pentagon puts your tax dollars to work

...lining the pockets of its favorite contractors...



Yes, the flying HumVee, and no, I am not kidding.

I wish I was.

The Pentacle Pentagon spares no expense to provide meaningful projects for Congressional lobbyists National $ecurity.

a nod is as good as a wink to a blind Biden

His goal seems to be rallying his electoral base without antagonizing his $electoral ba$e.

Oh, quit whining, Joe Biden. No longer the $enator from MBNA, you now apparently rank as the vice-preznit pwned by Bank$ters of Amerika.

black helicopters and ninja policy

Apparently stateless gunship helicopters are now killing enemies of the $tate in Somalia.

Apparently...

...not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality...

This one sentence from the Post article nicely summarizes the state of Obama's civil liberties record:

The Obama administration has cited the state-secrets argument in at least three cases since taking office - in defense of Bush-era warrantless wiretapping, surveillance of an Islamic charity, and the torture and rendition of CIA prisoners.

And now, in this case, Obama uses this secrecy and immunity weapon not to shield Bush lawlessness from judicial review, but his own.

Obama is no more or less in charge of all this than the last figurehead of state.

Yesterday Avedon linked to some cheerful reading here. I don't know if this explains much of anything, but it's consistent with the pattern.

lowdown dirty tricks

...actually telling voters what your opponents will do.

coming soon to your social circle

It's not just Minnesota:

The FBI's surveillance of a protest group in Iowa City prior to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., two years ago was far more extensive than initially reported, newly obtained FBI documents show...

...The heavily redacted records indicate the FBI believed the Iowa City activists were part of a national network of radicals intent on disrupting the Republican convention in St. Paul, as well as the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The agency apparently learned of the Iowa City group, known as the Wild Rose Rebellion, by monitoring its Internet site. Names of most of the activists were deleted from the documents before they were released.

Goodner, 29, of Des Moines, who participated in the St. Paul protests and who is named in the documents, said the records show the federal investigation was a waste of time and taxpayer money.

"There's no evidence presented in hundreds of pages that anybody with either the University of Iowa Antiwar Committee or the Wild Rose collective had any plans for anything other than a nonviolent, if confrontational, direct action street protest at the 2008 Republican National Convention," Goodner said. Most of the Iowa City activists did not attend the Democratic convention in Denver...

The FBI agents conducting the surveillance were assisted by officers from the University of Iowa Department of Public Safety, the Iowa City Police Department and the Coralville Police Department, FBI records show. As many as six agents and officers were involved in some surveillance operations...

...the FBI infiltrated the Iowa City protest movement in 2008 by planting a paid informant who attended meetings and hung out with activists. In addition, confidential FBI documents obtained by the newspaper showed an undercover deputy from the Ramsey County, Minn., sheriff's department traveled to Iowa City to attend an anti-war conference in April 2008...

Always beware of people advocating illegal activity in protests. They're usually the Man, or strongly influenced by the Man. Those they organize are usually they're targets when it comes time for trophy arrests. It's an M.O. they've used since Chicago in 1968.

it's not a bug, it's a feature

Atrios and his beloved god Krgthulu both miss a point that Bruce A. Dixon groks in fullness:

... When questioned about restoring the draft back in 2004, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, in a moment of rare frankness, replied that the old-style draft was no longer needed. “We have,” he told reporters, “an economic draft.” In even plainer language, the United States armed forces rely on a poverty draft.

Millions of youth emerging from high school every year face bleak prospects for careers and higher education. Good jobs are hard to find, vocational training slots aren't free and don't guarantee a job on completion or even completion itself. Their already strapped families can't even borrow the sixty, eighty or hundred thousand it will take for one child to get a bachelor's degree. But the military recruiter they see in high school every day drives a flashy new car, has a nice apartment, dresses well on and off duty, picks up the tab at restaurants every day, and has an answer for everything. Really, just one answer, that the straight road to acceptance, independence and adulthood lies through the military...

The ridiculously high unemployment rates are on purpose. During Viet Nam they discovered they could not keep an Empire with a slave army. Much better to have highly indoctrinated and desperate volunteers. The high unemployment situation does that, among other things good for the Empire.

Bad for its citizens, the Depressed proles, the vaporizing middle class on the treadmill to economic oblivion as the fossil fuels run out, though.

Unless you're one of the wealthy folks that matter to the $ystem, in which case, hey, the Recession is so over.

Just ask Larry "Mission Accomplished" Summers going back to his cushy Harvard tenure and million-dollar-a-year speaking engagements.

news you won't see on the front page of Pravda

Seek a permit for a legal antiwar protest in Minnesota and get raided by an FBI anti-terra-ism SWAT team.

...The home of Minneapolis anti-war activists Mick Kelly and Jess Sundin were among those searched, they told the AP. "The FBI is harassing anti-war organizers and leaders, folks who opposed U.S. intervention in the Middle East and Latin America," Kelly said before agents confiscated his cell phone. Sundin called the suggestion they were connected with terrorism "pretty hilarious and ridiculous..."

While on the front page of The New Uork Pravda we're breathlessly informed:

Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries"

It's Obviously a threat to National Security.

why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans?

Fortunately, sweetheart, you've taken yourself out of the gene pool.

that'll show 'em, Barry

[with a tip'teh tinfoil to WGG]

...Barack Obama made an angry personal attack on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday, saying claims by Iran's president that the United States carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks to prop up Israel were "hateful, offensive and inexcusable".

Absolutely right. Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton let it happen on purpose in order to produce a "catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor" so they could take the war bucks and run. Israel had nothing to do with it.

Directly, that is. Where you could see it, anyway.

"Look at it this way..."

"... Ahmadinejad was one of the student leaders who made a deal with GHW to hand the election to Reagan by holding on to the hostages until inauguration day. In the plot of the last 30 years, he's in a position structurally equivalent to that of Bob Woodward. With this in mind, reanalyze his behaviour since becoming president."

-Dr. Violin

I agree. Equating a possible role of players in the United States government to Holocaust denial is one of the most amazing leaps of disinformation I've ever seen. This man is owned.

And the resulting fury he generates? Only among the manipulated...

Timeline

credits for this image belong to Justdrew. I have no earthly idea where he got it from.

Homeland In$ecurity

A vast right-wing coalition of billionaires and oil companies working together to destroy enviromental legistlation?

A conspiracy theory? Well, sure, and absolutely right.

A governmental police agency working with energy companies to make sure they can continue their destructive and toxic practices unopposed.

Another conspiracy theory? Well, sure and also absolutely real.

Something went wrong with Benazir Bhutto?

Avedon, I am not sure it did from the Company perspective.

Take Bill Kristol, for instance

You know, I'll bet there are people in the Company who miss them- for just that very reason.

The whole PNAC gallery of war criminals, for instance.

how you know your guy threw the fight

the palookas' party

aimai, via Atrios:

...because no one is excited to vote for someone who says “I did the best I could and if you don’t like it blame yourselves, or the other guy, or something.” If the Dems want to win they have to start screaming “We did the best we could and those fuckers want you to have to start killing and eating your old people! They don’t care if you die in a ditch! They hate you so much that the more we tried to do for you the less we were able!” The Dems have, so far, insisted that half a loaf is pretty darned good. Well, if it is then they need to be satisfied with half an electorate because if the electorate is satisfied with the dems so far then they probably aren’t motivated to turn out because they figure the dems are handling the republicans ok. If the voters aren’t happy with what has happened so far the Dems can’t keep insisting that they are wrong—they have to point to the enemy. So far they haven’t done that successfully. You know how I know they haven’t done it sucessfully? Because if they had every single former Democratic or independent voter would be rioting in the streets right now against the Republican agenda.

The electorate is disaffected, uninformed, fearful, busy, dealing with all kinds of personal crap like unemployment, health care issues, fear for the future, grandma and grandpa’s inability to sell their home and move into assisted living, declining assets etc…etc…etc… and Obama and the dems are wasting time explaining that, really, the last two years have been very succesful?

This is what's known as planned obsolescence.

one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong

Barak Obama as a socialist, 9-11 was an inside job, and George W. Bush was a war criminal.



One of the greatest things (if you're a Company disinformation spinner) about the main$tream is how easy it is to use the strong desire to keep the money flow steady by not rocking the boat and to get people to forget what happened in the United States of Amnesia.

I like this analysis:

The names change, but the formula remains the same.

1) Libertarians and Constitutionalists are beginning to pose a significant threat to the Neoconservative base. Meanwhile, 9/11 Truthers have convinced over a third of all registered Democrats that Bush at least had foreknowledge of the attacks.

2) Co-opt the libertarian Tea Party movement into a pro-war, Christian fundamentalist movement that obsesses over a historically illiterate narrative of Obama as a socialist. Throw in some patently xenophobic memes about him being a secret Kenyan Muslim to completely discredit the original movement. Meanwhile, poison the well of 9/11 Truth with ridiculous and racist memes, along with using every other disinfo trick in the book.

3) Have John Stewart and Stephen Colbert denounce the crazies on both sides and announce a rally to restrict restore the dialogue to a sane narrative that average, mainstream Americans will be made to believe in. 9/11 was an outside job, and Obama is doing the best he can in hard times.

Actually 9-11 was a moebius strip job.

The inside and the outside merge seamlessly.

Ten more years of this kind of equivalency and it'll be right there in the history books with all the other lone gunmen, and George W. Bush will be remembered as the Hero.

Let's go back to Mr. Greenwald:

I think Jon Stewart is one of the most incisive and effective commentators in the country, and he reaches an audience that would otherwise be politically disengaged. I don't have any objection if he really wants to hold a rally in favor of rhetorical moderation, and it's also fine if, as seems to be the case, he's eager to target rhetorical excesses on both the left and right in order to demonstrate his non-ideological centrism. But the example he chose to prove that the left is guilty, too -- the proposition that Bush is a "war criminal" -- is an extremely poor one given that the General in charge of formally investigating detainee abuse (not exactly someone with a history of Leftist advocacy) has declared this to be the case, and core Nuremberg principles compel the same conclusion.

Leave aside the fact that, as Steve Benen correctly notes, Stewart's examples of right-wing rhetorical excesses (Obama is a socialist who wasn't born in the U.S. and hates America) are pervasive in the GOP, while his examples of left-wing excesses (Code Pink and 9/11 Truthers) have no currency (for better or worse) in the Democratic Party. The claim that Bush is "a war criminal" has ample basis, and it's deeply irresponsible to try to declare this discussion off-limits, or lump it in with a whole slew of baseless right-wing accusatory rhetoric, in order to establish one's centrist bona fides...

Broderism is always irresponsible but usually profitable for those looking for the short-term privateer kind of money.

Welcome to the Machine, Mr. Stewart.

It's Classified

...and if they told you what was under the sand they'd have to bag you:



"The well is officially dead. There's nothing to see here. Move along, move along."

economic proofiness

Charles F. Oxtrot noted that even in his polemic Mr. Herbert's stats about poverty seem to be a little on the low side.

You might say that (with a tip o'teh tinfoil to Lambert & cd again).

Nignag's take on this?

...“It could have been worse” is the only argument the Obama administration can make heading into the fall election campaign, but it is doubtful that the millions of workers who have lost their jobs, health insurance and homes over the past two years draw any comfort from it. Obama’s statement combined this minimizing of the crisis with a concluding declaration:

For all of our challenges, I continue to be inspired by the dedication and optimism of US workers, and I am confident that we will emerge from this storm with a stronger economy.

This rhetorical flourish might be translated as follows: As the chief political representative of US capitalism, I am amazed that there has not yet been a mass upheaval among US workers against both my government and the financial aristocracy it serves. I hope to be able to delude working people with rhetoric about “hope” and “change” for at least a few more years. While arrogantly dismissing the plight of tens of millions of poverty-stricken USAians in a brief written statement, Obama devoted most of his working day to meeting with two groups of corporate CEOs: the President’s Export Council, which seeks to promote the competitiveness of US industries by cutting their costs, including labor costs; and leaders of 100 of the biggest corporations, who gathered to insure that the administration’s education policy is aligned with the needs of the corporate US.

You know, the Titans Lienholders of Industry Finance the Casino who keep the One's (and the DNC's) campaign coffers cashflow full liquid.

Speaking of the bank$ters, Glen Ford asks the One what are these bootstraps of which he speaks?

...The two devastating recessions of the last decade have had catastrophic effects on Black economic prospects. Yet, despite the monstrous setbacks of recent years and the general failure to bridge the racial wage and wealth gap over the last three decades, there still exists a strong current of Black political thought that insists African Americans can pull themselves and the rest of the race up by their financial bootstraps, through hard work and pooling of collective resources. Some of these arguments are unashamedly Black capitalist; others preach a brand of communal partnerships among Black entrepreneurs and consumers that attempts to make the entire Black community a kind of capitalist engine of self-help. What binds the variations on the "bootstrap" theme together, is an essential refusal to challenge the capitalist system. The belief is that Black "buying power" or race-based investment schemes will allow Black folks to rise from the bottom of the American economic barrel.

Implicit in this line of thinking is the notion that Blacks are at the bottom because they have not been trying hard enough to move up - which is also the assumption of white racists, whether they call themselves conservatives or liberals. The most fatal flaw in the Black capitalist world view is the assumption that Black people actually have the wealth and discretionary income to build an internal economy that could insulate them from the general capitalist crisis. We know different, because all the data tell us that Black household income is stuck at the same level relative to whites as back in 1979, and Black comparative wealth was steadily eroding even before the last decade's recessions. And we know that Black wealth has been further diminished relative to whites in the ongoing housing meltdown, in which Blacks are twice as likely to face foreclosure. And we know that Blacks, a majority of whom are renters, bear the brunt of the dislocations caused by rampant gentrification, which in some urban areas forces families to spend more than half their income on rent.

Simply put, there ain't no damn money for these bootstrap capitalism dreams, and there never was. There was never the possibility of building a Black General Motors - and now General Motors requires billions of dollars in federal infusions to survive...

Mr. Ford, it's not just poor blacks. It's the majority of the population, of all colors, that's fed this tripe.

Glen Ford also has some choice things to say about Obama's new infrastructure stimulus plans:

Very late in the game, President Obama unveils his version of an industrial policy for America. But it turns out that under his "infrastructure bank" scheme "the same Wall Street players that have relentlessly and methodically de-industrialized the United States for the past 30 years, would direct the economic makeover of the country, all the while earning interest on the borrowed funds."

...The president's proposed bank is yet another ploy to create a new windfall for the private bankers on Wall Street. When hundreds of thousands gather on the Washington Mall for the NAACP's and organized labor's rally for jobs on October 2, the Obama administration's mouthpieces will try to fire up the crowd by invoking the president's plans for a National Infrastructure Bank. The public-private scheme was announced so late in the political season, it appears more like a last-minute sop to panicky congressional Democrats desperate to show that their president and his party are good for something besides funneling $12 to $14 trillion to Wall Street - the biggest transfer of wealth of all time, for which Obama will go down in history.

The so-called infrastructure bank masquerades as the beginning of an industrial policy to reverse the export of jobs from the United States. Obama is spinning the scheme as his variation on Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, when the federal government directly created millions of jobs and invested public monies in a vast, new infrastructure, much of which we are still using, today. But in reality, the president's proposed bank bears no resemblance to the New Deal of the 1930s.

Rather, it is yet another ploy to create a new windfall for the private bankers on Wall Street - a public-private scam. The scheme would transfer billions in public funds to a new banking entity, to attract the mega-bankers, whose investments would be guaranteed by the U.S. government. The Obama bank would then lend these monies to selected projects, overseen by a board heavily weighted with representatives of those same Wall Street firms and their corporate allies.

Essentially, the same Wall Street players that have relentlessly and methodically de-industrialized the United States for the past 30 years, would direct the economic makeover of the country, all the while earning interest on the borrowed funds. That's not a New Deal, that's a license for yet more no-risk self-dealing by Wall Street, guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States. It is a travesty and a swindle.

The moneyed classes refuse to invest in any economic and social development unless they are positioned in the middle of the money stream. But, that's what you get when finance capital has a lock on the political and economic process; nothing emerges except that which expands the power of capital.

At this stage in the decline of capitalism, the moneyed classes refuse to invest in any economic and social development unless they are positioned in the middle of the money stream, to siphon off the greater part for themselves, at no risk to themselves, and with ultimate control over the shape of the project. They will not support education unless they own a profitable piece of it, through hedge fund-backed charter school companies and other privatization schemes. They will not allow a revamping of health care unless their profits and commanding position in the system are preserved. They will not lift a finger to slow the process of global warming, unless creating a green economy dumps a forest of green on their balance sheets. And they will certainly not permit any combination of politicians funded by them - as is the Obama wing of the Democratic Party - to even attempt a modest re-industrialization of the United States unless they are allowed to empty the U.S. Treasury of every available public dollar.

Nearing the end of the second half of his term, President Obama finally - finally! - comes up with a plan flavored with just a whiff of the New Deal. But it's just another Wall Street concoction.

And it's not even empty calories. It's pure fat for the bank$ters, and Kool-Aide for the Democratic voters.