James Clay Fuller

If the media are America , we're dead

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:19:00 +0000

Early in April of this year, a reader sent me a note which included the observation that most of the people he knows seem to think the corporate media, collectively, “is America.”

That is, he explained, they believe “nobody cares about this” or “everybody's talking about that” based entirely on what they get from television, radio or newspapers. In that very common way of thinking, if the media giants ignore something, then it is not worth noticing. If they yak something up, then it is, per se, important and “everybody is talking about” whatever it is.

It is an astute assessment of how, and what, and who the American public sees.

In an essay a few days ago -– posted just below this one -– I suggested that Americans push our government to transport massive amounts of life-saving goods to the suffering citizens of Myanmar and Zimbabwe. I said we should do that even though the insane and vicious rulers of those countries prefer to let hundreds of thousands of people die of hunger, thirst and disease rather than allow anyone other than themselves credit for saving their people and perhaps gaining some measure of power or influence.

I never expected any sort of action, of course. Didn't expect even one person to send one note to one member of Congress. I don't imagine any such note was sent.

And that, really, was the point of what I wrote.

(Here, let me adopt Dan Rather's preference for calling news outlets collectively “the press.” Though now failing, newspapers remain –- at least in our collective memory -– the core of serious news distribution.)

When I wrote that piece, I intended to do at this juncture what I am now doing: pointing out that the press, acting in conjunction with and on behalf of the ruling minority of this country, has so ordered public thinking that while we can soberly discuss whether to rain death on countries that pose no threat to us, it is all but impossible to imagine a serious discussion on whether or not to displease some monstrous little dictators simply to save several hundred thousand human lives.

We do death. We commit mayhem. We don't save lives.

Not even in our own country: witness Hurricane Katrina, the first of many proofs established by our neocon government.

Unprovoked invasions of other countries are within the scope of American behavior. Bombing those who can do us no harm and slaughtering countless civilians for the sake of controlling oil fields and providing huge profits for a tiny group of “defense” contractors –- let us not at this stage, after all the evidence laid before us, pretend other motives –- is again under discussion.

True, many of us are against more such ventures, but obviously not enough against to act to prevent our ruling billionaires from committing the crimes.

It is a given that should anyone –- even, let's say, a couple of dozen members of Congress –- stand up and say that we must do something real to care for the people of Myanmar and Zimbabwe, even against the wishes of the murdering thugs who rule in those places, the press would ignore the move or nearly so. Bigger newspapers might do a single paragraph in a news roundup, television almost certainly would black out the attempt.

Most of the public would never know what was said in Congress, and those who did hear of it would dismiss it as trivial because that is how the press treated it.

Now someone is going to say I can't know that's what would happen.

Yes, I can, and do. So do you, if you're honest.

There are hundreds of precedents for just that kind of calculated dismissal of actions, opinions and people not approved by the ruling elite, and therefore by the press.

The most immediate example is the treatment of the move by Rep. Dennis Kucinich Monday, June 9, to impeach George W. Bush.

Most of television and radio simply failed to mention Kucinich's introduction of 35 articles of impeachment. The mighty New York Times “covered” it in one longish paragraph in the “National Briefing” roundup at the bottom of page 21 of its main news section on Wednesday. If my local newspaper made any mention of the story, I couldn't find it, although the rival newspaper had a very short piece in its on-line version.

CNN seems to have mentioned it only in a crawl which ran a few times at the bottom of the television screen -– but the crawl emphasized that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi again said she would not allow impeachment rather than saying anything about the articles introduced by Kucinich.

I suppose some of the haters of shout radio and Fox Propaganda took their shots, but they don't count, certainly not as news reports.

OK. So we all know that impeachment won't get off the ground. But why is that?

Millions of us, almost certainly a majority, also know there are legitimate grounds for impeaching Bush and removing him for office. Many of us think it would be a very good idea to bring out all the crimes and list them and show the proofs in the Congressional forum.

Dennis Kucinich is a brilliant and widely respected member of Congress. He was a candidate for his party's nomination for president.

But he is, in truth, a nonperson in most of the nation because the press has decreed it. He never had a chance at the presidential nomination because the press refused to acknowledge his existence. He deserved a shot, but the press and its masters didn't want him, and so it disappeared him, along with some other worthy candidates and some unworthy.

The press and its masters also do not want impeachment, and so it is a nonissue. Any coverage it receives will be dismissive and probably derisive.

The press decrees it, and the press is America.

On the other hand, the masters of the universe are building toward attacking Iran.

The press has been hammered over and over because of its slavish catering to the Bush administration in the lie-filled leadup to the invasion of Iraq. Quite a few of those in the press who knelt before the king on that issue have sort of, kind of, almost admitted their guilt. But they're doing it again on Iran.

If Bush, or Cheney, or Rice or any of the neocons makes any accusation against Iran it is dutifully printed or read at the top of the news, with flags waving, bands playing and fireworks in the background, or nearly so. It is The Word, we are given to know. The placement of the articles says the claims are true, the headlines assume they are true and the writing says so.

“The president plans to highlight concerns about a nuclear-armed Iran during his final European trip,” said a New York Times sub-headline on Tuesday. And the writer of the article said that although Bush's jaunt might have the appearance of a farewell tour, “it's actually a high-stakes diplomatic mission, spurred by Bush's fear that Iran is an increasingly urgent threat and that Europe may not take it seriously enough.”

Parse that paragraph: The writer, Jennifer Loven, flat-out tells us this is a “high stakes...mission.” She's not quoting anybody. And she tells us that Bush fears that Iran poses an “urgent threat.”

Really? Bush also told us that he knew -– emphasis on knew -– that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” and chemical weapons and was getting set to produce nuclear weapons, and those aluminum tubes were for making such weapons, and on and on. And the press respectfully reported every claim. And we know it was a package of lies, and that most of the reporters had to have known that.

We knew, how could they not?

Is Loven sure that this time, unlike all the other times, Bush is telling the truth? By her phrasing, she tells us she is sure. Do you trust her?

And why does the story –- in fact, every story that reports administration tales of Iran's supposed nuclear threat -– not mention the fact that almost every major intelligence agency in the western world has stated that the country's nuclear weapons effort, which apparently wasn't much to begin with, ended in 2003?

If we believe what passes for news on television and in the once-were newspapers and magazines, if the press “is America,” this is a doomed country.

An alternative to bombing Iran

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:41:00 +0000

Let's have some fun today.

Let's all telephone and write the White House and tell Dick Cheney to bomb Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

If we can pull it off, it will be the biggest -- maybe the only -- win-win deal of the Bushcheney years.

I'm betting that even countries like France and Australia –- only recently come to its senses and out of Iraq –- will join us, and won't that be a hoot? Could be a great party.

Progressives and neocons alike would satisfy their basic desires. Liberals could support an action benefiting a large number of suffering human beings, and the Bushies would get to drop something out of airplanes onto people of tawny hue. With luck, they might even get to kill a few folks, though probably not many.

The only possible losers would be the bloody bastards who rule those two rotten and destitute countries, and not even Dick Cheney cares about them, really, even though they're his kind of people in a general sort of way. They recognize no law but themselves, and are perfectly comfortable with letting thousands of human beings suffer and die for the sake of maintaining their holds on power.

(Yes, I know. Cheney doesn't care about anyone, really, but he doesn't even need to coddle those butchers. Zimbabwe has no oil, and Myanmar produces barely enough to keep Blackwater's new Brazilian-made fighter plane in the air; it's 12,000 barrels of crude a day probably wouldn't pay the rent on Cheney's various secret hiding places.)

OK, I'll come clean. I'm not advocating that the American military drop explosives on the starving, parched, homeless and increasingly ill masses of Zimbabwe and Myanmar. I figure the neocons can live with the lack of explosive death and destruction, given the other goodies that undoubtedly would come their way.

What I am proposing is the biggest airlift in almost 60 years, maybe ever.

We could send cargo planes over Myanmar and Zimbabwe and drop huge quantities of drinking water, food, basic medicines, large tents, sleeping bags and whatever else international aid agencies say is necessary. To hell with the rulers and their refusal to let foreign help reach their suffering people.

We could keep it up until all of the Burmese and Zimbabweans are adequately cared for, until sufficient medical teams are on the ground and water supplies are adequate and safe and everyone has shelter.

It might even inspire the citizens of our two target nations and give them the strength to rise up against the tyrants and install democratic governments, and that is what we want for everybody, right?

Right George? Right Dick?

The Myanmar generals might send up a couple of fighter planes to threaten our cargo craft, but we could chase them off with war planes of our own. Maybe our pilots would even get to shoot down a couple of the generals' craft, thus giving the White House a taste of blood and a chance to strut in military fashion. George could haul out his flight suit for a press conference.

What's that, you say Mr. Minority Leader McConnell? It would cost too much and threaten our economy?

Ummmm.

We maybe could reduce the payments to various Halliburton entities by the amounts they seem to have stolen from us and use that for the humanitarian aid. Ditto a bunch of other crooked contractors. We could cut off all government contracts with Blackwater, which perpetrates one criminal outrage after another, and let the military do the jobs that are rightfully theirs. (Cheney can pay his private army himself, if he insists on keeping it around.) We could stop preparing to bomb Iran.

Or we could haul our sorry behinds out of Iraq over the next few months and come out billions of dollars ahead.

Yes, of course the Cheney cohort, supported and nudged by Israel's right-wing leadership, wants to kill Iranians by the thousands. The neocons -- please, may the day come when they are just cons -- figure killing more Muslims will put Bush III in the White House so they can continue gathering power and the world's wealth to themselves.

They haven't thought it through yet.

If we come around all big-time humanitarian, most of the world will swing quickly from despising the Bushies and all they touch to praising them. Many Americans who won't touch John McCain because of his taint of Bush will feel free to vote for him. Think the the relief they'll experience in the South and places like Kansas and rural Ohio because they won't have to stretch for excuses not to vote for the black man.

For a brief period leading up to this fall's election -- before everybody notices that Americans still are going broke, lack decent health care and are losing their jobs and homes –- the neocons will have a chance to hold power without getting into another shooting war that even they must recognize they cannot sustain. (They aren't that stupid, are they? Are they?)

C'mon, gang. Let's make those calls and send those emails.

Another Big Lie campaign

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:26:00 +0000

In case you missed the two or three 12-second reports on the news: Shaul Mofaz, deputy prime minister of Israel, said Friday that an attack on Iran's nuclear sites is “unavoidable” if Tehran refuses to halt it's alleged nuclear weapons program.

He didn't say “alleged,” however. That's my word, a proper modifier, but not something he or the Bushies would use, any more than they talked about “alleged” WMDs in Iraq.

Mofaz failed to specify how Iran can now halt a program that all U.S. and European intelligence agencies and top scientists agree was halted in 2003.

(Stop your car right now. Never mind that it's been stored in a garage with the engine removed for five years. Stop it now or we'll kill you. By the way, have you stopped beating your wife?)

The Israel minister also said that the attack will occur if international diplomacy fails to make Iran stop that already stopped weapons program. But, of course, Israel and the Bush administration flatly refuse to engage in “international diplomacy” with Iran, although Iran has several times offered to negotiate without restrictions on topics.

In case you haven't quite got it: Israel, with timing almost certainly coordinated with the American White House, is pushing for an attack on Iran. If Israel attacks, we'll soon take over the major portion of the killing, of course.

Isn't it interesting to live in a very big and powerful country that allows a much smaller country to call the shots on key portions of its foreign policy?

OK, hard to tell who's manipulating whom sometimes, but that this country's politicians are frequently the intimidated stand-ins for Israel's right-wing government and its big-buck U.S. backers is not in question.

A little prayer, of sorts, for Obama

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:43:00 +0000

To whom it may concern:

Please, do not let Barack Obama be pressured or suckered into accepting Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

If you have any warm feelings at all for humanity, please do not even let him be conned into accepting her into his cabinet, should he be elected President of the United States.

Suicide is not a healthy action, nor is it an action a rational and physically healthy person should take. Neither is putting yourself needlessly into the position of requiring the services of a full-time food and drink taster – metaphorically speaking, of course.

It is obvious to all but the most passionate of Clinton supporters that her hubris is at least equal to that of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Combined.

There is no question but that she believes she has an absolute, divinely ordered, right to the presidency. She and her most ardent followers believe that anyone -– that is, Mr. Obama -- who stands in her way is somehow evil, a liar and a cheat surpassing even the aforementioned Bush and Cheney.

They cannot fathom that anyone could legitimately prefer another candidate, nor that she could lose in a fair contest, let alone one in which the nasty tricks and ugly innuendo were mostly on her side. (She made a blatant appeal to racists; he made no such appeal to sexists.)

There is no question that should she be named the vice presidential candidate, or should she be elected vice president, or even if she is placed in the presidential cabinet, she will use all of her skill, devote all of her energy and time to undermining Mr. Obama. Her life will be devoted to “proving” that it was she who should have been nominated and elected.

Whether subtly or obviously, she will try to foment opposition to his positions, to make him look weak and inept, to sell to other insiders and, especially to the public, the idea that she could do better. She will weaken an Obama presidency, and thereby do harm to the country and the world, for the sake of her own overweening ambition.

I plead, therefore, that you protect Barack Obama from what would be his greatest possible blunder, and keep him resolute against the wailing and gnashing of teeth and threats of the Clintonites.

I ask this for the sake of the United States of America and the world.

Memorial Day pride: Not so much

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 28 May 2008 04:20:00 +0000

Memorial Day 2008 has come and gone. Some folks tended graves of their families' dead, politicians gave speeches that mostly insulted the intelligence of Americans who have some sense of reality and knowledge of facts about the state of the country and its wars.

Many people, though perhaps fewer than usual because of soaring gasoline prices, simply took a long weekend outing and tried to avoid any thought of the suffering and pointless violence in the Middle East.

George W. Bush, who drove us into a terrible war for profit, shamed us by going to Arlington National Cemetery and spouting jingoistic falsities about “those who gave everything to preserve our way of life.”

Of course, he shames us simply by his presence on the world and national stages.

Bush did not explain how sacrificing thousands of our young and destroying a country that never presented the slightest threat to us “preserves our way of life” -- unless, of course, he referred to the self-indulgent lives of what he has publicly designated as “my kind of people,” the economic elite who continue to suck immense wealth from the Iraq war.

Along with other “defense” contractors, Vice President Dick Cheney's company, Halliburton, has seen astounding profit growth since the U.S. invaded Iraq, and its stock price, despite recent downturns in the market, has created and enhanced Midas-like fortunes for its insiders. KBR, spun off from Halliburton in the spring of 2007, saw a 65 percent year-to-year gain in fourth quarter 2007 profits, and the trend coming into this year was upward.

A small percentage of Americans, my wife and some friends among them, mostly people who have suffered the loss of loved ones in war, went to ceremonies to honor their dead. A high percentage of those, including my wife, lost someone in Vietnam, another war that we should never have fought.

Those of you who saw our unelected president on television, and those of you who wept yet again for lives lost, did the speeches make you proud?

Other than those who mourn still for people who died in wars that really did have to be fought – World War II and even Korea – did the words make any of you proud?

My guess is that for most of us, the answer is, in current vernacular, not so much.

We don't see the “Proud to be American” bumper stickers much in my neck of the woods any more, and the “Freedom Isn't Free” bumper stickers also are much less numerous than they were up to a couple of years ago.

Even some of the ex-Marines who reflexively and loudly support whoever gets us into shooting and bombing dark-skinned people on foreign soil -– I know a few of them very well -– have gone strangely quiet. They hate it, but many have been forced to recognize that there is not and never was a legitimate reason for invading Iraq or for continuing the occupation of that ruined country. Reluctantly, a growing number admit that the invasion and occupation have nothing to do with maintaining our freedom.

Some even have begun to realize that the opposite is true, that using war and terrorism as an excuse, Bush & Co. have curtailed our freedoms and wiped their feet on our Constitution.

Such realizations have not come evenly or everywhere, of course. In places like West Virginia and Mississippi -- where substantial numbers of voters told television reporters that they would never vote for Barack Obama “because he's a Muslim” or, as one redneck West Virginia woman put it, “I ain't gonna vote for no Hussein; I don't want nothin' to do with no Hussein” -- reality is only an unacceptable rumor to many.

For a while on Memorial Day, I listened to Amy Goodman's radio program. The broadcast consisted of testimony of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans on what they saw and experienced in their wars.

The vets read their prepared statements in hauntingly flat voices, which did not change even when they talked of their post-homecoming suicide attempts, as at least two did. They spoke of mayhem and brutality that was as routine as tying one's boot laces, of deliberately and without reason shooting Iraq drivers as they came within range of the U.S. Army convoys, of taking Iraqi men who had been arrested and found innocent of any wrongdoing deep into the desert and beating them, throwing them out of trucks and stoning them “with softball-sized rocks.”

All of the U.S. veterans admitted to participating almost casually in such acts -– atrocities, we would call them if someone else did those things to Americans.

The few who were on Goodman's program are only a tiny fraction of the number of U.S. Iraq war veterans who have given such testimony. Some have spoken directly to Congressional committees. The American corporate-owned big media have refused to cover the veterans' appearances or to report their stories. The American propaganda machine, which includes even such supposedly liberal outlets as the New York Times, have put the veterans in a blackout, a no-touch, no hear zone.

Those vets who have chosen to tell the truth publicly call themselves the Winter Soldiers, and you can see and hear what some of them have to say if you use that term in whatever on-line search engine you prefer.

The blackout on the soldiers is only one aspect of the propaganda machine's current activity.

Much of America has chosen to tune out the wars. Don't ask, don't tell. Perhaps most people think there is nothing they can do to stop the madness, probably some are feeling guilty about having cheered the initial bombing of Iraq and the “Mission Accomplished” performance of our worst-ever president. And a great many of our entertainment-saturated public simply don't want to hear or see anything unpleasant. High gas prices are tragedy enough.

Whatever the case, the big, false news outfits, broadcast and print, consciously aid the willful amnesia.

As the New York Times itself reported Monday, May 26, Memorial Day, coverage of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is diminishing rapidly. Fewer reporters cover the wars than at any time since they began, and those who remain are more deeply embedded than ever, which means they seldom learn or report anything that is not approved by the military.

David Carr, the Times writer, said the Pentagon and the Bush administration continue to impose “increasingly onerous rules of engagement for the news media and the military" and to "make it difficult for the few remaining reporters and photographers to do their job: showing soldiers doing theirs.”

The dead still arrive back in this country in their flag-draped coffins in the middle of the night, and photographs still are not allowed.

The owners of the big media outfits do not fight the rules; they're on the same side, Bush's kind of people.

Carr noted that the Project for Excellence in Journalism's coverage index shows that coverage of the Afghani and Iraq wars was just 3 percent of all print and broadcast news coverage last week, down from 25 percent as recently as last fall. He also noted that it isn't because the wars are any less deadly; 2007 was the bloodiest year for American soldiers in Iraq, with 900 killed and many more maimed.

“There is a cold and sad calculation that readers/viewers aren't that interested in the war, whether because they are preoccupied with paying $4 for a gallon of gas and avoiding foreclosure, or because they have Iraq fatigue,” Carr quoted the Times' executive editor, Bill Keller.

So, if you don't want to know, they won't tell you. We can all hide from the truth.

But the big boys of the so-called news media –- they're all part of the propaganda machine now -– are falling all over themselves to help the Bush/neocon gang bring us to acceptance of yet another military adventure.

Every time the Bush crowd, or some organization under its thumb, makes an unsubstantiated claim about Iran's supposed threat to us, or Iraq, or Israel, it gets major story treatment, and no one in the propaganda media ever thinks, or dares, to ask for evidence that the claims are true.

Tuesday's New York Times (May 27, 2008), had at the top of its front page a story saying that the International Atomic Energy Agency has accused Iran of “a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be pointed less at energy generation than at military use.”

The story hints, and suggests, and assumes, but offers no evidence that Iran “may” be producing enriched uranium “which can be used to make electricity or to fuel bombs” faster “than expected.”

It's all innuendo; the story contains no demonstrable facts other than that Iran denied members of the agency access to some sites where, it is assumed, centrifuge components are being manufactured and where research on uranium enrichment may -– may -- be taking place.

A couple of points: Israel, which fairly openly nudges this country toward attacking Iran, is loaded with nuclear weapons -– outside of international rules, but the official pretension is that we don't know that the weapons exist -– and there have been calls from the Israeli right and its supporters to use them on Iran.

Yet imagine what Israel, let alone this country, would say if the same agency demanded full access to its nuclear program.

Oh, by the way: There is general agreement among intelligence agencies that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

But that New York Times front page story is how the propaganda machine works these days. The neocons make no secret of the fact that they want to bomb Iran, and that takes at least some public support in this country, and so you have to con a sizable portion of the public.

So. Memorial Day:

My chest used to fill with admiration –- I could physically feel it -– when speakers recalled the courage and sacrifice of those who captured Guadalcanal and fought desperately for other tiny Pacific islands. As recently as April of last year, I stood on Omaha Beach in Normandy with tears running down my cheeks as I pictured the horror and almost unimaginable courage of those who fought there in June of 1944.

But 2008, a criminally needless war designed primarily to further enrich a tiny clique of the already immensely wealthy? A president who cares nothing for “our troops” or the American people? A cowardly Congress that won't act to stop the horrors for fear of losing the votes of the terminally ignorant?

George Bush stood in Arlington Cemetery Monday and said he was proud.

But most of the rest of us: Not so much.

Lebanon through the looking glass

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:51:00 +0000

Hello? Red Queen? Hatter? Rabbit? Alice? Anyone?

Reading about the recent hostilities in Lebanon and growing ever sadder, it suddenly hit me like a two-by-four to the head that all of the reporting and all the pundit blathering on the situation, at least in this country, has a surreal, Wonderland quality.

A major, elephant-in-the-room piece of the story -– Israel's invasion of Lebanon less than two years ago -- has been entirely absent from the so-called "mainstream media" coverage of the battles and political maneuvering and the further suffering of the Lebanese people. Not so much as a whisper have we heard, not so much as a single line of agate type have we seen on that essential piece of the story.

Yes, it's true. The American corporate news organizations have blacked out an enormously significant piece of the Lebanon puzzle, an act for which I can find no reason other than to actively support the machinations of Israel and the White House.

I was so disoriented by that realization, I had to go back and check 2006 news coverage to make sure I wasn't suffering from false memory, possibly from some sort of pollution-induced delusion.

Nope. It's there in the on-line archives and in my files: Israel, with full support and hush-hush collusion of the Bushcheney administration, did invade Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and keep it's troops there for about two months.

During that time, as many observers such as Human Rights Watch attested, Israeli troops fired indiscriminately on civilians as well as opposing combatants, and in one highly memorable event, deliberately blasted a clearly identified United Nations observer outpost, killing all of the occupants. Lots of entirely innocent men, women and children were successfully slaughtered, in fact. Some reports suggest cluster bombs left in Lebanon still are killing and maiming people, in fact.

As world conflicts go, the war was brief, but up to the highest standards for brutality. And down to the lowest standards for organizational control and lack of legitimate purpose.

The dissatisfaction of Israeli citizens with the action -– mostly because a large portion of the public wanted their army to essentially destroy Lebanon then and there, or at least Hezbollah in Lebanon -– caused political upheaval in Israel. A minority of the Israeli population protested the action because they believed it was wrong. (Americans generally forget that there is a large, rational peace contingent within Israel.)

The purported motivation for the July 2006 invasion was the capture of two Israeli soldiers in a raid into Israel by Hezbollah guerrillas. (Or Hizbullah, as everyone but the U.S. press and officials spell it.)

In fact, U.S. officials gave their approval for the Israeli attack about two months before it began, according to Seymour Hersh, the master reporter who has broken many of the big stories on Bush administration and Pentagon misconduct and illegal activities in Iraq. White House approval was sought and granted before the two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, Hersh and others reported not long after the invasion.

The kidnapping was just an excuse, and an exceptionally weak one at that.

Reason leads to the conclusion that the real Israeli motivation for the invasion was to weaken Hezbollah and prevent its retaliation against Israel if the United States should attack Iran -– an attack the Israeli government was (and is) pushing. As are some of the White House neocons.

A number of people who know the territory suggested that some in the Israeli hierarchy were hoping the attack on Lebanon would stir things up enough to give Bushcheney an excuse to move against Iran.

This is relevant today because at the time, a few people who actually know something about Lebanon and its history predicted that the ultimate result of the Israeli invasion would be to halt any shakey progress the country was making toward renewed stability and democratic government. Their knowledge was strong, their assessments based on deep understanding of the situation, and their voices were largely ignored by our government and the big “news” outfits.

(Stability and a democratic government in Lebanon is something the Bush crowd claims it wants; its actions prove it ain't necessarily so.)

Lebanon, once the most enlightened spot in the region, was ripped to shreds by a terrible civil war that went on and on, from 1975 to 1990. There were many causes, including an unsettling large influx of Palestinian refugees who mostly were driven out of their homes in what is now Israel. Interference and power-grabbing by Iran and, especially, Syria also were major factors.

At long last, Syria was forced out, and for a decade, Lebanon made slow but steady progress toward becoming what it once was.

That does not suit the purposes of those who rule Israel.

It is true, of course, that Hezbollah, a nasty ally of Iran and Syria, still wielded considerable power in large sections of Lebanon and, in fact, did conduct small but sometimes deadly raids into Israel. But the Israeli invasion of Lebanon predictably strengthened Hezbollah's position in Lebanon. People who had stood aside from the organization now look to it as a protector from Israel's brutality.

As someone I heard somewhere said in a wider context: The “war on terrorism has become terrorism.”

So Israel pulled the still wobbly legs from under Lebanon's struggling government and, they no doubt hope, have created another excuse for Bushcheney to drop explosives on Iran.

You can get a sense of the propaganda to come in this country from the column by Thomas L. Friedman – one of Israel's most aggressive shills in the American press – in the New York Times of Wednesday, May 14.

Friedman has concocted, or someone has concocted, a theory that we are entering a new cold war, a “struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbolla.”

There's more, designed to instill in his readers a fear of that insidious cabal and anger that the United States isn't being tough and smart and bullying those damned A-Rabs into doing exactly what we (and Israel) want at any given time. Essentially, Israel and the Bushies want to call the shots in Lebanon.

But, of course, “The outrage of the week is the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah attempt to take over Lebanon,” says Friedman, who goes on to rant about Bushcheney stupidity and cowardice that has led to the United States being “not liked, not feared and not respected” in the Middle East. The key word, as I read it is “feared.”

In other words, we aren't brutal enough in forcing Middle Eastern nations (other than Israel, of course) to knuckle under.

Is that Israel talking or what? It's an amazing formulation that ignores reality almost entirely.

We're disliked and certainly not respected in the region, and it's obviously true that the Arab and Palestinian populations don't tremble in fear of us, as Bush and Israel would like, but the reasons for that are many degrees from what Friedman claims.

And aside from the nonsense of suggesting that Iran, Syria and Hezbollah are acting together like a well-designed machine, nowhere does he make mention of the fact that the conditions that led to current instability in Lebanon were created, deliberately, by Israel with the blessing of the Bush White House.

Hello?

Oh, what a tangled web...

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:47:00 +0000

It's shameful, I know, but I enjoy the stories of “family-values,” law-n-order rich-guy politicians who get caught with their pants down – the more so if it's pretty much literally true.

Generally speaking, I believe in cutting people much slack for human failings, and I strongly believe that the news people should stay the hell away from stories about politicians' personal lives unless their actions are directly and clearly relevant to their job performance.

However...

Pols who rant and rave about the immorality of others, build their careers on those rants, and demand purity of all others deserve anything they get when their hypocrisy is exposed.

In that mean spirit, then, I am enjoying the information I just picked up from the New York Times about New York Republican Congressman Vito Fossella, New York City's only Republican congressman, who represents an enclave of the rich on Staten Island. He's mentioned in the essay just below this about the economic “stimulus” package.

Seems that Vito got caught driving drunk –- his blood alcohol content was double the legal limit –- after a little party at the White House that may have been continued elsewhere.

Because of a false excuse he gave to the arresting officer, it came out that the professionally moral, upright and hard-law-enforcement boy has, in addition to his wife and three kids on Staten Island, a mistress and daughter in Alexandria, Va., and lives with them while defending righteousness in Congress. Officially, he has no Washington area address.

No further comment needed.

Economic stimulus or just another con job?

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:56:00 +0000

Most of us haven't yet received our tax rebates -- our shares of the bipartisan boondoggle designed to make us believe that Congress and the White House are doing something about the gawdawful economic mess they've created for us.

Same old, same old.

The money will come fairly soon, and I'll bet I can predict what you're going to do with your little piece of the action. And make no mistake; it is a little piece.

You will buy something you were going to buy anyway with some portion of the money -– less than a third of it in most cases. For me, it will be a new computer monitor to replace an elderly model that is fading quickly. Like me, you'll use the rest of it to pay down debt and/or to bolster your savings.

Several polling outfits did quick surveys after the panderers in Washington passed the bribe package for the inattentive cops on the street -– that's us -– and they all came up with the same answers for the majority of taxpayers. Those answers are as stated above.

Poorer folks, of course, get less than the rest of us, and the very poor get nothing, even though they are the ones who can be relied upon to spend whatever they get for the simple reason that they have no choice. They're trying to survive from day to day.

But this thing isn't about reviving the economy; it's about appearances and votes. Once the package got rolling, no American pol would dare to speak against it.

As an economic stimulus, folks, the rebate program is somewhat less effective than laying a length of worn out garden hose across a high-traffic road and calling it a speed bump.

The other pieces of the scam –- the ones the broadcasters and corporate newspapers have either ignored or barely mentioned -– are of no more use to the economy as a whole, but they please a select group of beneficiaries who mostly ain't you and me.

Here are some facts that you probably won't have seen in a newspaper or on television:

* This one made it into one news cycle in some places, but was given a pass by many nooz purveyors. It's relatively minor, but interesting: Remember that one-page letter you got from the IRS a couple of weeks ago? The one that told you in the language of a corporate public relations agent that you were going to get an “economic stimulus payment?”

That letter cost us, the taxpayers, $42 million.

* Newspapers and broadcasters keep telling us about how much we're going to get. They don't tell us what the charade costs the country as a whole. The total cost has been figured by a number of agencies, public and private. The degree of difference among them is almost nonexistent.

Some I've read say total cost will be $168 billion, some say $167 billion. That's before any “stimulus” benefits that will be claimed.

The Congressional Budget Office says the package will decrease federal revenues by a total of $114 billion this year, but projects that the stimulus payments to citizens will result in $80 billion in direct spending during this year and next.

Uh, yup. We're throwing out $114 billion in order to get people to spend $80 billion, much of which would be spent anyway. And that's if the estimate isn't overly optimistic, as I believe it is.

Of course, not much of that $80 billion, even if the money is spent, will revert to the U.S. government. The White House will say we have to cut more from health care programs for children and the elderly to make up the loss.

There are other factors at play in the so-called stimulus package that complicate the figuring, but over-all the Budget Office estimates, the package will increase federal budget deficits by $152 billion in 2008. It estimates that certain benefits from the package will reduce the size of increase in our budget deficit to $124 billion by 2018. Yeah, sure, you betcha, as we say in Minnesota.

* There are a few other numbers that don't seem to have been included in the Budget Office stats that I found, although I could be wrong about that; clear, complete and candid reporting on the situation is scarce to nonexistent.

Among the apparently missing numbers, as stated in another federal report, is the $767 million it is costing us just to administer the stimulus program.

That number includes the cost of moving staff around to get people in position to perform such tasks as answering telephone calls from taxpayers and other routine administrative jobs. It also includes an unspecified amount of lost revenue that will result because people whose job it is to track down unpaid taxes have been taken off tax law enforcement to do routine administrative work on the stimulus program.

* In a newsletter to constituents, Republican Congressman Vito Fossella of New York (Staten Island, and hold the jokes about how he might be connected; I thought of them, too) bragged to his high-roller supporters that one of the big benefits of the stimulus program is the part that gives substantial breaks on mortgages to people who buy costly homes in places such as his district.

If you're the sort whose home requires what the trade calls a jumbo loan, Fossella is correct. You probably didn't catch it on TV or your local newspaper, but the stimulus package includes a provision to increase mortgage loan limits in certain high-buck areas (such as Staten Island) -– on loans of between $417,000 and $729,500 –- and give “qualified buyers” in that price range an interest rate break of one full percentage point on loans issued under Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs.

Trying to buy a house, but need a loan of only, say, $90,000 or even $350,000? This stimulus is not for you.

* This one isn't for you, either, oh mighty consumer: It's the almost unreported piece of the package giving very large tax breaks to “small” businesses that invest in new equipment. The New York Times had one story back in mid-February, when the package was still under discussion in Congress, but I haven't seen anything in the corporate media since.

(I emphasize the “small,” by the way, because so far I have found no definition of that under the stimulus law, and the business world and government tend these days to define “small” as any business with annual revenues of less than several billion dollars a year.)

Now it is a fact that business –- some business –- investment in new equipment and property is good for the over-all economy. As with public infrastructure such as roads, bridges and natural gas lines, it's a lousy idea to let your plant and equipment deteriorate; you lose business in the long run, and the jobs you provide disappear when you fail.

And, yes, many businesses must update periodically to remain competitive.

But I'm skeptical about this package, folks. The business investment stimulus in the package gives those “small” businesses big tax breaks for investing in equipment -– 50 percent additional deduction on any new equipment purchased. It also greatly extends the amount small businesses can deduct from annual income, up to a total of $800,000 per business.

Several little smells set my BS detector twitching.

Small business, real small business, as in locally owned restaurants, shops, small trucking companies, small specialty manufacturers and all the rest, are so far doing better than the rest of the economy. I've seen no evidence, however, that there's a widespread need for new equipment.

Also, with the public finally backing off unnecessary spending, it would seem the wrong time for most small businesses to put substantial amounts of money into new equipment, tax breaks or no. Even with those tax breaks, you have to pay substantial sums for new equipment, and if business is dragging you don't get much use from that equipment. It works if you need to replace something worn out, of course, but it's unlikely that a majority of small businesses across the country will suddenly have to replace substantial pieces of their equipment.

So invest to expand? In a recession? Only if you have so much money you can afford to dump big sums into equipment you don't need now but might want some day. In my experience, few small businesses have that kind of capital lying around unused.

Nope. The phony stimulus will get lots of sycophantic praise from the myriad trade associations and Chambers of Commerce and such, and so it will do the politicians -– especially Republicans -– some good, but the value to the economy is suspect. In fact, it may even do some businesses some harm by leading less than clear thinking small business owners to spend money they can't afford.

So somebody is bound to ask: What would you do?

Well, folks, a stimulus package could be useful, but it would have to be totally different from the one we have here.

One thing that actually would help revive our sicker-than-you-think economy is job creation. We've been losing jobs steadily, and all signs point to that continuing if the pols go on doing what they're doing.

What we need, what this country badly needs, is government incentives and direct government spending ala Franklin Roosevelt's programs to both create jobs and rebuild the infrastructure that is falling quickly to third-world levels under the continuing rule of “no new taxes” Republicans and Republicrats.

And let's not even get started on the ridiculous McCain/Clinton idea of a "vacation" from the federal gasoline tax...

A novel idea for our future

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:29:00 +0000

Let's play a little intellectual game – not too difficult, mind you, and sure to be lots of fun.

We'll each pretend to be an author planning to use a number of established facts, real-life facts, as the basis for constructing a novel. Let's see how many of us take the proposed book in the same direction and what truly different thoughts occur. Detailed plotting is not necessary, but certainly can be done.

I'll state a relatively short list of facts and real situations which all of us should use. At the bottom, I'll list just a few more of the hundreds of well-documented bits of information which can be used or not, as each “author” likes, to bolster the themes of his or her novel.

The basic facts (as I said, all real, all matters of public record):

-- There is a sitting president, highly unpopular, who achieved the office through a combination of electoral cheating, lies spread through a compliant news system and a Supreme Court majority that shares his political views. He gained a second term through further skulduggery. He's now nearing the end of his final term, an election is scheduled in a few months.

-- That president is an intellectually deficient, superannuated frat boy and locker room bully. (Not verifiable “fact,” perhaps, but widely agreed upon.) The policies of his administration have been created by a cabal of right wing power lovers and profiteers. Foreign policy has largely been controlled by a vice president who is disdainful of the public and the country's Constitution and also is demonstrably paranoid to a degree bordering on, if not actually, psychotic.

-- The country is in long and seemingly endless wars in two Islamic countries. The biggest of those, in Iraq, was deliberately created by the administration and sold to the public by means of a long series of egregious lies, most of which have since been exposed. A sizable minority of the public continues to believe the lies despite the exposure. This country, as such, derives no benefit but a great deal of pain, loss and distress from the bigger of the two wars and doubtful benefit from the other which, in any case, is not being fought seriously by the administration. However, a small economic elite profits almost beyond comprehension from the wars.

-- The administration is backed by an extremely powerful, if loosely knit, group of billionaires and corporate executives, notably those who have been the financial beneficiaries, either directly or indirectly.

-- For the first time in the country's history, it is using torture, sometimes against those merely suspected of being enemies of the administration, if not the state. Numerous other rules of conduct have been breached for the first time and the country's standing in the world has plummeted.

-- The country, for the first time, is doing massive spying against its own citizens, in some cases even after the administration's own courts –- that is, judges appointed for political reliability rather than knowledge of the law -– have said the spying is illegal and called for it to stop.

-- Before the spying and torture began, the administration had its own faithful lawyers create legal arguments supporting its right to commit those illegal acts. Essentially, the lawyers said that if the president (administration) does something, that makes the something legal. As with a god, the mere doing make the action right.

-- The president has issued a great many executive orders giving himself the right to do what he chooses in a variety of other areas. News of the orders rarely reaches the public.

-- About two years before the end of the president's legal term, the administration issued a very large contract to build a network of concentration camps within the country. Locations, exact size and, most importantly, the general identities or descriptions of those to be imprisoned in the camps were not specified. After brief news stories about the letting of the contract in just a handful of the nation's biggest newspapers (no television coverage), none of the news media ever again mentioned the camps. The contract to build the camps was given to a subsidiary of the company led by the vice president. Presumably, the camps are now in shape to accept prisoners.

Incidentally, the vice president supposedly severed all connections to the corporation after his election, as required by law, but it soon was shown that he still has interest in its financial success. The company has grown at least ten-fold, entirely through government contracts, since the president and vice president took office.

-- About a year before he is to leave office, the president issued another executive order giving himself the sole right to declare a national emergency under which he can take control of all functions of federal and state governments, or any of those functions he chooses to take. The order received almost no coverage in the mass media.

(Note that, as with the domestic spying and torture justifications, the administration has never to date made any such preparation that it did not use at some point.)

Those are the basic facts.

Now I'll suggest some bits and pieces that probably should figure into your tale – real facts or events that will help give bulk to your scenarios:

-- Despite overwhelming disapproval by the public, the administration continues to build a phony list of excuses for attacking yet another country, Iran. As the end of the president's terms grows closer, the drumbeat for that attack grows louder.

As with the buildup to the attack on Iraq, the country's news media are helping the administration build its case. There also is recent information that gives reason to believe that some of the supposed provocations are, in fact, false flag operations. Statements from the White House and military leaders are given lengthy and prominent coverage with no attempt on the part of the media to verify their accuracy. Numerous indications that the White House and generals are lying are almost entirely ignored by broadcast outlets and major newspapers.

Some members of the administration's coterie of right wing policymakers openly admit, when asked, that they are eager to attack Iran; they admit it in the certain knowledge that the word is unlikely to reach the great majority of the citizenry.

-- The country's economy is in very bad shape – far worse than any of the major media have acknowledged and certain to get worse still. Another Great Depression is not out of the question. However, the very wealthy have been almost entirely unaffected this time by the troubles plaguing the general population and, in fact, are using the present situation to consolidate their hold on the country's wealth.

-- Democrats, supposedly the opposition party, in fact continue to allow the administration to do pretty much as it pleases without serious opposition. Democrats go along with continued funding of the Iraq war, with trade agreements and other efforts that do much for the rich and much to the rest of the population.

They continue to approve bills that do away with long-standing protections for the public on issues such as bankruptcy, personal privacy, control of employees lives by employers, contract guarantees, ability to sue for redress of corporate wrongs and many others.

-- The administration, not content with having major influence over news media, by dint of the fact that most of the media are owned by extremely wealthy supporters, among other things, uses fascist-like propaganda methods to control what the public knows. One of many examples, and this was reported by some major news outlets: the Pentagon controls what is said by virtually all of the retired high-ranking officers who serve as “analysts” and “consultants” for all major television news outlets. So all on air “expert analysis” of various wars and hotspots is essentially Pentagon (administration) propaganda.

-- A nice little bit that could add flavor to your story: A reporter for ABC news noted in a discussion with Vice President Dick Cheney that a huge majority of the country's citizens oppose continuation of the war in Iraq, the vice president replied “So?”

He went on to say the public policy should not be geared to public attitudes.

A novelist might conclude that the snide “So?” was more than Cheney's usual disdain for the American public, which is how it was widely described. The novelist might consider, for example, that Cheney always is fierce in defending his and the administration's actions, that he is relentless in pursuit of what he wants regardless of the needs or desires of others, and that he never, ever is willing to give up something he wants, such as a war.

A novelist might therefore decide that Cheney's offhand response was rooted in his certainty that he'll have what we wants, even though the administration is, by law, scheduled to leave office next January.

That can lead one in interesting directions.

Other facts, chosen at random, for possible use:

-- There is mounting evidence that the administration and its military favorites are lying about the supposed provocations by Iran just as they lied about evidence they manufactured to support the attack in Iraq.

-- Although this is an election year, the administration has felt free to attack Medicaid funding, to fight states that want to increase health care coverage for uninsured children and to slash at other apple-pie programs the neocons and super wealthy dislike. It is hacking at education funding and other health care programs. Election or no, it seems utterly unconcerned with public opinion or perceptions.

-- There is a mountain of evidence –- make that a mountain range of evidence -– that the country's present economic troubles are rooted in deliberate dismantling of government regulatory safeguards and could have been avoided had not the regulators been, in fact, part of the machinery to defraud the public.

-- While crying “Support our troops,” the administration has greatly reduced support for returning veterans, especially those physically or mentally wounded, in order to save money. (It could be noted that there is no profit in caring for them.) Scandals of malfeasance and nonfeasance in providing health care for the injured and mentally damaged arise almost daily. The Pentagon lies egregiously about such things as the suicide rate among Iraq veterans, the number injured and so on. In other words, once no longer able to return to Iraq, many of the veterans are abandoned.

Now a bit of wild speculation to liven things up. You may use it or not, of course, but if I intended to write this novel, I'd consider carefully that if the neocons remain in power through declaration –- one possibility for the book -- they might then have to decide what to do with Bush, who may well be seen as a liability. That provides some other interesting novelistic possibilities. But that's just my imagination working.

If H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley could do it, we can do it. Enjoy, and if you're so inclined, let me know your basic story line, or the conclusions your novel reaches.

Remember that this is just for fun. It can't happen here.

Cable business nooz; feminism or ogling?

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:28:00 +0000

Something that never occurred to me until I began paying a little attention again to cable nooz business programs a couple of months ago:

Only physically very attractive women in the 30s are qualified to anchor shows covering economics and the equities and commodities markets. In fact, very few people who are not very attractive women in the 30s – men and older women, for example – are qualified even to report on such topics.

If that weren't true might not someone less glamorous, perhaps even male, be in such a position here or there?

Who knew?

One of the cable networks used to have a couple of guys in their 40s whose work on late afternoon roundup shows I appreciated. They seemed to me to be knowledgeable, accurate and balanced in their reporting, and occasionally insightful in their restrained analyses. One of the two has been relegated to a very early morning show and the other apparently appears on air only occasionally these days, usually in spots that define his role as gofer for the glamorous young women.

I spent about 40 years covering economics, the markets and major corporations and dealing with such decidedly unbeautiful people as CEOs, heads of securities firms and economists such as Walter Heller, John Kenneth Galbraith and the champion con man of all time, Milton Friedman. The longer I was at it, the more I learned, and the more I came to think that it took a lot of learning to qualify as a solid reporter on economics. It never once occurred to me that gender and physical attractiveness might be qualifying characteristics.

Having listened to some of the gorgeous anchors over the past two or three months, I have come to the conclusion that most, if not all, of them have spent far more time learning about hair, makeup, clothing and how to moderate their alto voices to suit the topics than they have to learning journalism or economics.

On average, excluding a couple of highly competent yet still attractive long-time reporters, I'd guess the average economic education of the glams to be about one week in a crash course. To be honest, their ad-libs often demonstrate what seems to me an appalling ignorance of the topics at hand.

Obviously, the cable execs know more than I do, however, since they have a lot more money than I do. (That's modern American reasoning, folks). So I must be wrong again.

Isn't television a remarkable educational tool?

Avoiding thought, dodging reality

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:05:00 +0000

“Free man is by necessity insecure; thinking man by necessity uncertain.”

--Eric Fromm, psychotherapist, author, refugee from Nazi Germany, who described three ways people escape from freedom: 1. Accepting authoritarianism. 2. Destructiveness against all who oppose or disagree. 3. “Automaton conformity.”

It was obvious we were going to have another enormous and wholly spurious media flap the minute Barak Obama made his statement about small town people being bitter because politicians and government ignore their concerns.

When he said that some people turn in anger and resentment to “guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” it was a given that the intellectually stunted and ethically challenged adolescents of the corporate news outlets would go out of control. Again.

It also was obvious that Obama would backpedal with the speed, but without the skill, of a circus unicyclist, as soon as the fit hit the shan.

Pity. His statement was dead-on accurate as far as it went.

Of course, at least according to popular “wisdom,” it would have been career suicide to go on and tell the rest of the truth: that a sad majority of Americans behave in that way, at least some of the time, because they are ignorant, intellectually lazy and pants-wetting afraid of unpleasant truths.

Avoidance of the unpleasant, especially unpleasant self-knowledge, is a national character trait, like overeating and the belief that we have an absolute right to most of the world's oil.

The ignorant and fearful –- who include a whole lot of small town people, especially but not only in the South and the rust belt –- eagerly embrace phony issues they can grasp without effort. That is a big reason that we have had Bushcheney and the neocons in the White House for seven-plus years, and why we had a right-wing majority in Congress for more years, and why we have a crumbling economy, a rapidly shrinking middle class, a health care system that would shame a second world dictatorship and an insane and endless war in Iraq and why we're threatened with the distinct possibility of another, even more insane war against Iran.

Lots of bewildered folks jump on supposed threats to their right to hunting guns, and embrace anti-gay fictions and racism thinly disguised as worries about immigrants because such issues, while fictions created by demagogues, are within their capacity to understand.

Hordes of people are ready to stomp on anyone who doesn't share their embrace of the hate-preaching version of evangelical Christianity because they are afraid and don't understand what's happening to them; the preachers give direction to their anger and offer certainty, however false.

The fake, simple and simple-minded issues laid enticingly before them by the Republicans and the corporate news media and right wing preachers and their allies are attractive alternatives to dealing with real problems because they don't require guts to face or intellectual wherewithal to understand.

It's obvious that most Americans, like many people everywhere, are scared to death of freedom, of the right and necessity -– especially the necessity –- to acquire and understand facts and then make often difficult choices.

They fairly beg to be told what to do and they want to follow a clear set of rules and want everyone else to follow exactly the same set of rules and they're willing, sometimes eager, to destroy anyone who doesn't embrace the rules.

“Home of the brave and land of the free” indeed.

Well.

Until a day or two ago I wasn't going to say any of this, and I wasn't going to address the flap over Obama's statement because I figured the talking heads and op-dead columnists would worry it to shreds without any help from a small-time blogger from Minneapolis.

But the performance of those commentators, especially the Republican yap dogs, is way beyond the tolerable this time, and has become even worse since the absurd ABC Democratic “debate” a few nights ago.

(A sane candidate with a modicum of courage – which excludes all still in the running at this point – would refuse participation in any further fake debates.)

Most of the words expended on the subject of Obama and “bitterness” on television have been silly in the extreme, which was to be expected. Commercial television hasn't allowed a wholly rational human being to be heard –- except very occasionally on purported comedy shows –- since Jimmy Carter got wrinkles.

The press hasn't been noticeably better.

Babbling jackasses such as William Kristol have truly fallen overboard. Kristol tried in an April 14 column to equate Obama's statement with Marxist antireligiosity.

David Brooks, who has made a career out of misunderstanding almost everything he hears or reads, concentrated on Obama's reluctant responses to the flurry of questions about trivia that took up more than half the pretend debate. He also demonstrated that he, Brooks, entirely misunderstood Obama's comments about small town folks.

To give credit where it is due –- and it is due him so seldom –- Brooks got one thing right. Obama was silly to say that he would never raise taxes for anyone making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year.

Sadly, even the revered Paul Krugman screwed up on this one.

Krugman said Obama was wrong about the attitudes and actions of small town folks. He based his assessment on some highly unreliable polls that he said show that small towners are not bitter, and don't turn to religion out of frustration and that they do vote on economic issues “instead” of things like guns and gay marriage. Not only are the polls unreliable because the pollsters obviously asked the wrong questions in the wrong way, but Krugman's reading of what they said is highly selective.

In putting down Obama, Krugman also retracted his earlier praise of Thomas Frank's book, “What's the Matter With Kansas,” which addressed the question of why so many Americans vote against their own interests by backing Republicans who represent only the interests of the very rich.

So what's up with that?

It seems clear that Krugman has one of the common faults afflicting us less brilliant mortals. He can't accept information or opinion that conflicts with his commitments. Can't admit he's wrong, in other words.

Krugman is a long-time supporter of the Clintons, and has been a backer of Hillary Clinton since the campaign began. Obama is anathema to him.

It's become embarrassing, actually. Lately he's been writing fiction about the wonderfulness of Bill Clinton's economic policies, and conveniently forgetting that Clinton laid the groundwork for many of the admittedly more egregious sins of the Bushcheney Mob.

Krugman apparently doesn't remember Bill's “welfare reform,” which is directly responsible for much of the horrendous poverty now sinking millions as jobs disappear. He can't admit that Billy boy opened the way for the wholesale shipping of American jobs to labor-exploiting countries and gave impetus to the rule changes that have allowed American corporations to screw over their employees and retirees time after time.

Perhaps he'll regain his balance after the election.

I want to join Michael Winship of Truthout in asking a simple question:

Winship said accurately that the responses of the “news” boobs, and of Hillary Clinton and John McCain to Obama's comments have been “mind shattering in their hypocrisy and cynicism.”

He also provided a more complete report on what Obama said, including that “In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, they feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it.”

There's more, and it is all accurate. You can look up the whole statement.

So with Winship, I want to ask: Why shouldn't those who have been screwed over by the Clinton and Bush administrations be bitter?

When you get down to it, perhaps the public is becoming less willing to accept simple-minded fake issues such as lapel pins as substitutes for dealing with its real problems. Maybe, just maybe, folks are catching on to the fact that they've been had by a bunch of thieves, butchers and con men. Perhaps they do begin to understand what the news punks are trying to hide -- that Obama voiced a basic truth. Maybe, despite the efforts of the broadcasters and columnists, speaking that truth will not work against the candidate in this instance.

(FYI: I am not an Obama true believer. I'm still seriously considering casting a write-in vote for president regardless of who becomes the Democratic nominee.)

The story untold, the issue unexamined

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:35:00 +0000

The degree to which the corporate news outfits control public discourse in this country truly is appalling.

Even people who rail daily at the unbalanced coverage, corporate cheerleading and outright lies of cable and network news and daily newspapers are sucked in. We allow CNN and Fox and the publishers and editors of the Los Angeles Times and Minneapolis Star Tribune and the New York Times (with it's wonderfully rich looking, and thin, veneer of social responsibility) decide what we talk about and how we view events and issues.

The most effective tool the phony newsies have, and the one they use most often, is the simple one of ignoring events and facts they would prefer we not notice.

Or, truthfully, sometimes they ignore topics of great importance because they don't recognize the importance. Journalism is operating these days with greatly diminished mental capacity.

On the deliberate side, think of how the big operators channeled the presidential campaign to the selection of their preferred candidates; they refused to allow the voices of those they did not like to reach us. It's a much more powerful technique than lies or distortion, and much less dangerous to the perpetrators. Someone calling them on lies and fiddling the facts might be believed; anyone yelling because of a lack of coverage generally is dismissed as a whiner.

These thoughts, recurring ones for me, arise this time from the way in which the news bosses have turned public attention away from what may be the most important political issue the Democratic Party has ever faced.

There was a brief flurry of coverage, and then silence, on the threats of Hillary Clinton's big-money supporters against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. There was no subtlety in the warnings; they included other Democrats who have said or were a threat to say that the party's superdelegates should choose the candidate preferred by the majority of Democratic voters.

(Pelosi, in typical form, has since backed down from her original statement.)

Makes one wonder what the rich and powerful are saying privately to the various Democratic office holders and others who may think it's time for Clinton to get out of the race. CNN, the broadcast networks and Fox surely won't tell us.

The thing is, that blackmail by the “consultants,” lobbyists and rich contributors is considerably more significant than the corporate news people would have you believe. They minimized it with short coverage, mostly not in prime time or on front pages, and then quickly went quiet on the subject. It deserves much more probing and one hell of a lot more public discussion than it has received.

I've been waiting for some well-known and respected columnist or a serious editorialist to dig into the issues that should arise from those threats, but it looks like I may as well sit down at the corner and wait for Godot.

However, the twerps of TV suddenly, and all together, began a couple of days ago to devote hours of air time to sliming the Democrats who suggested that it is time for Clinton to withdraw. I watch very little television, but in total viewing time of perhaps 12 minutes Monday I heard three different youthful twits on three different cable faux news channels proclaim with jutting chins and self-righteous airs that “She has the right to stay in the race.” In exactly those words.

What a coinkydink.

Those three and a couple more I caught later are making it very clear indeed that they want Clinton to keep running.

Well, they would.

The talentless young reporters who are trailing the candidates would die of boredom if Clinton withdrew. They've been in their most enthusiastic “Let's you and him fight” mode for months, because such fights are exciting to them, and require no real effort or mental exercise to cover. The loss of Clinton would leave them with few choices other than to cover the issues and the differences between the Democratic nominee and John McCain, gawd forbid.

And, of course, having the last-standing Democrats chewing each other up – or, actually, having Clinton chewing up Barak Obama -- exactly suits the agenda of the billionaire media moguls.

(Have you noticed, by the way, that almost no one on television does straight reporting any more? Monday I watched a couple of callow 20-somethings display their sub-par educations and lack of historical perspective while proclaiming Clinton's right to go on running -– a right no one has disputed.)

All of the noise covers the fact that no one is talking about the real issues raised by the pressure on prominent Democrats to shut up.

The story in a nutshell is this: A letter signed by 21 high-buck fund raisers for Clinton – people who dig money out of corporate treasuries and billionaires' petty cash funds for their candidate, in exchange for publicly unspecified services – wrote Pelosi a letter in late March, telling her to stay out of the contest for Democratic superdelegates.

They were angered because the speaker suggested a couple of days earlier that the superdelegates should support the candidate -- obviously Barak Obama -- who has the widest popular support among Democrats.

The New York Times and some other outfits reported the obvious fact that the letter carried specific threats, the main one being that if Pelosi and other high-ranking Democrats who believe the party's voters should pick the candidate don't shut up, the money guys would close the spigot and refuse to fund Democratic congressional candidates. Refusal to fund Obama, should he beat Clinton, also is implied. The consultants are fairly frothing at the mouth over the suggestion that rank and file Democrats should be allowed to pick their candidate.

That's a fairly straight story. The problem is that it brings before the public, or at least before Democrats, an issue that cries for much greater airing, and nobody in what we call the news media wants to touch that issue.

In fact, the story and its greater meaning lie at the heart of the biggest of all questions for the Democratic Party: Will it continue to be a poor cousin to the Republicans – the Washington Generals to the Republican Harlem Globetrotters -- going along with most of the corporate agenda and being granted terms of office when public anger against the Republican power elite grows strong enough to be a problem? Or will it become again what it once was, the political voice of the majority of Americans who are not billionaires, religious fanatics or complete suckers for corporate propaganda?

The letter from the Clinton fundraisers clearly identifies, even describes, the failures that turned the Democratic Party into the limp and largely useless body of corporate toadies it has been in recent decades.

Big money consultants-cum-fundraisers tell the party leadership and high-level candidates what positions to take, what the candidates should say, what subjects are off limits and, very often, who the candidates should be. They make their choices based on calculations which recognize that Democrats must appear somewhat more liberal on some issues than Republicans (say gay rights, global warming and stem cell research) but not so liberal as to seriously endanger relationships with very rich donors and corporate elites.

The corporate bosses recognize (wink, wink) that Democrats must seem to the public to have somewhat liberal positions, but they need to be assured that the Dems won't necessarily act on those positions, or at least go too far.

Consultants position themselves with the corporate bosses because they are, essentially, part of the world of business/political elites and also because they know only one way to operate: by financing campaigns with money from corporate and super-rich donors.

They do not understand, nor can they accept, that the Internet and organizations such as MoveOn and all of the other highly effective liberal organizations, can raise as much or more money in small amounts as the elites can from their big donors. To accept that is to acknowledge that they are dinosaurs who should lie down and sink quietly into the ooze.

In fact, the reaction of those consultant fundraisers to the challenge of the genuine liberal organizations is to become ever more arrogant, to demand with increasingly strident voices that the party leaders and candidates and office holders toe the line, follow orders and throw away any real beliefs or ethics they may once have embraced.

Hillary Clinton is the epitome of the corporate Democrat. Where Obama stands remains unclear.

Clinton's career and that of her husband, the slowly self-destructing Bill, are entirely woven into the lattices constructed by the consultants and big-money donors. They eagerly conned the public, giving away American jobs and pretending to liberal causes while acceding to virtually every desire of the high rollers.

Hillary, having played the game by the corporate rules, now obviously can't fathom why she's still struggling to get the presidential nomination. She obviously believes the presidency is her right, that it is her turn, and she is stunned and angered that there are some who want to deny her what she believe belongs to her. Some of her consultants and staffers are wildly and openly outraged that Obama didn't go away like a good little apprentice when she deemed it time for him to go.

So the Dems are now at a deciding point. Does the party belong to Hillary and Bill and the consultants who so ably serve big money, or can it be, as it once was, something better for the American people?

No one I've heard or read recently even acknowledges that the question is open for debate.

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Here's a related subject no one is talking about: Maureen Dowd suggested recently, after nosing around among Clinton campaign insiders, that there may be a plan, or at least consideration of a plan, to do Obama so much dirt that, though he seems destined to win the Democratic nomination, he will lose this year's general election. Give John McCain one term, and then Hillary will be back in business in 2012, without Obama to get in her way. If there were some real reporters around, they might dig into that and either confirm or disprove that such an idea is on the table at Clinton HQ.

Where "Mission Accomplished" came from

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:50:00 +0000

Sometimes, the Bush White House's habit of borrowing intimidation and propaganda techniques used by earlier...ahem...authoritarian regimes sets some of us to rooting in our memories.

Since May 1, 2003, I have been annoyed by repeated thoughts of George W. Bush, in flight suit, landing on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (supposedly having co-piloted the plane that brought him in), striding across the flight deck with a similarly clad Navy pilot and then giving his smirking “success” speech.

In the background was a huge banner with the words “Mission Accomplished.” Remember? And around and before him, strategically placed, were military men in uniform dress, though not in all cases standard uniforms. Colors were chosen for effect.

I learned not long after that event that it had been staged by a team of television experts: Scott Sforza, former ABC producer; Bob DeServi, former NBC cameraman and lighting expert, and Greg Jenkins, former Fox producer.

Of course, much of America is annoyed and angered by that memory. When a clip of the performance is shown, some of us shout at the TV set. “Mission accomplished” has come to mean exactly the opposite for most of us, something more like “Wrongful action hopelessly bungled.”

But for me there has been the additional annoyance of knowing that I have, at some time in the past, seen almost the identical scene elsewhere, probably in a movie, but being unable to recall the exact circumstances. Every so often I've chewed at the memory for awhile, trying to bring it to the forefront.

Then, as I neared the end of Naomi Wolf's essential book, “The End of America,” there it was. She knew, and in a discourse on propaganda, press intimidation and faked news, she wrote it. I recalled the images instantly, after she reminded me.

The scene in which we saw George W. Bush was created by Leni Riefenstahl, a young woman film maker in the 1930s, a powerful if conscienceless artist who was invaluable in creating the public image of Adolf Hitler as an invincible, almost godlike leader.

Under commission from Hitler, Riefenstahl made one of the three or four most successful propaganda films ever. It is “Triumph of the Will,” released in 1935.

In the film, Hilter arrives at a gathering of supporters by airplane. The plane swoops down through beautiful clouds and lands. Hitler emerges from the plane and is greeted by a crowd of admirers, including some in paramilitary uniform. He reviews uniformed troops who stand at attention in rows. Also in an impressive uniform (of his own devising), he addresses his massed, obviously adoring troops. There are banners held high and, behind Hitler, designed by his architect, Albert Speer, a gigantic eagle which bears the swastika. Right where the “Mission Accomplished” banner is in the Bush knockoff.

Even worse, Hitler asks for support “for the accomplishment of this mission...for ours is a great mission.” (There are English subtitles on some prints of the film.)

I saw the whole film once, and have seen bits of it, notably parts of the speech and Hitler stepping from the aircraft, many times in television documentaries.

Slap of the forehead.

As I have said on several occasions, it is obvious beyond argument that the people who created this Bush presidency have closely studied the methods of Hitler's propagandists, and those of Benito Mussolini, too. But I can't recall another such a complete and open theft.

Riefenstahl lived long. She died in September 2003. If she'd hung on just a bit longer, perhaps she could have sued for copyright infringement or some such.

Oh, yeah: Like Karl Rove, Bush and all of that lot, like Speer and a number of other servants of the Nazi elite, she refused to admit, ever, that she had made a mistake or had done anything really wrong.

One nation, under surveillance

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:32:00 +0000

More than a year ago, my wife gave me a tee shirt that shows a pair of obviously hostile eyes over a line of type that says, “One Nation Under Surveillance.”

I wear it now and then in hot weather, and inevitably it draws looks and a rather surprising preponderance of knowing nods of agreement.

The truth of that tee shirt observation grows ever more obvious.

What may not be so obvious to many Americans –- especially younger Americans who tend to think that nothing important happened before they were born –- is the true purpose of the expanding White House-sponsored spying on U.S. citizens.

As were similar programs in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Pinochet's Chile and other repressive states, the aim is to produce fear, not gather intelligence. Those who read history don't need reference books to point to exact parallels.

Simply, there is nothing for the neocon imperialists or their surrogates in the FBI, CIA, DHS or any of the other initialed “intelligence” outfits to learn from taking photographs of antiwar demonstrators or infiltrating MoveOn and various veterans for peace organizations. Nothing useful by way of information, anyway. Anyone who thinks there is has never been involved in such an organization and probably gets all his/her news from Fox, Rush Limbaugh and other extreme right propagandists.

What such activity does, and what it is designed to do, is scare timid people -– and perhaps, as the pressure increases, not-so-timid people -– away from any public dissent from the policies of the Big Boss.

Example:

On March 19, my wife and I joined what may have been 200 other folks in a short antiwar demonstration on a bridge over the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Paul.

When we arrived, an unmarked helicopter was hovering over the river a hundred yards or so south of the bridge, and there it stayed for more than an hour, occasionally cruising in a short circle to reposition itself when the day's brisk winds blew it somewhat out of position.

It was not a news helicopter – those are all marked large in our neck of the woods – and there would be no reason for news photographers to sit in one place for that long. The head-on position of the aircraft was wrong for shooting pictures anyway. You pretty much want to keep moving, if slowly, to get the best angles, the best shots. I've been on aerial news shoots, and friends and colleagues did them frequently. You rarely hover in one spot for more than three or four minutes.

An unmarked (black, no less) helicopter hovering for a substantial period of time near a gathering of people protesting a government stance or action says only one thing: government surveillance.

And, obviously, the purpose is intimidation.

If the people involved in putting that helicopter over that entirely peaceful demonstration had wanted photographs and names and such, they would have been on the bridge taking pictures and asking for names. They'd have got them.

For the most part, the same people have been participating in weekly protests in that location for more than five years now. Few, if any, care who knows that they are against our occupation of Iraq and against everything the Bush administration stands for.

Everyone on the bridge that day must have had the same thought about the helicopter; certainly those I heard comment on it did. It didn't frighten them.

But will there be a cumulative effect? As people in helicopters and people in deliberately obvious surveillance cars and guys dressed in outfits that fairly shout “FBI” keep protesters under angry eye and scribble pretend notes at event after event, will some of the less dedicated decide it's more prudent to stay away?

More importantly, will substantial numbers of people decide they'd better shut up about administration policies, the war and other edgy matters altogether?

Certainly it worked in all those authoritarian states I mentioned above.

Just as here, the surveillance in those places began small, gradually grew, with more “spies” obviously watching more people. And, as is now happening here, the word went out about telephone tapping and other listening techniques. As here, rumors suggested that there was more spying than there actually was. That was, and is, deliberate. You don't have to tap phones to shut people up if they think they may be tapped. It's cost effective as a silencer of anti-Boss opinions.

Combine that kind of intimidation with the occasional arrest of supposed or “suspected” enemies of the state, even if the suspects later are released, and you will scare a hell of a lot of people into silence and even cooperation. We've seen a few such arrests in this country, and so long as the neocons are in control, we can expect to see more, and then still more.

Folks, this stuff is right out of the 20th century dictators' playbook. It's used because it works.

The only effective counter action, aside from replacing the government leaders, is a firm refusal to be intimidated now. If the public slips away and hides in silence, the rulers gain so much power that eventually they really can't be opposed without fear of imprisonment or worse.

A few quick comments

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:59:00 +0000

Geraldine Ferarro is a confidante and committed supporter of Hillary Clinton, and until Wednesday a member of the Clinton campaign hierarchy.

Well, it may be that like Karl Rove, she isn't really going away, but in any case...

Ferarro made a comment she knew would be picked up by national news organizations, claiming Barak Obama wouldn't be a serious candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination if he wasn't black. It is a belittling statement.

There is no way that Ferarro made that remark without the Clinton campaign, and the candidate herself, knowing of it in advance. They also knew the ensuing storm might require that Ferraro give up her official position with the campaign -– to become a freewheeling attack dog for Clinton, in all likelihood.

Clinton's smirking response, later boosted to some semblance of contriteness, is that she really does sort of wish that her supporters wouldn't make comments about the other candidate that are “rather personal” in nature.

If you know how campaigns work, and have followed the increasing nastiness of the Clinton bunch, you know it was a setup. It was the Clinton campaign's way of taking a racist shot at Obama while -– and this is most galling -– continuing to whine that Clinton is a victim of sexism.

Truth: Obama got to make his big speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention because he was black. It gave him a leg up, but almost anybody who becomes prominent in politics gets a leg up somewhere along the line. Clinton is where she is because she is a woman and the wife of the ex-president.

Fact: The woman is unscrupulous and unfit for public office.
------------------------------

An amazing number of terminally naïve Democrats continue to bubble about what a “dream team” Clinton and Obama would make as running mates.

That's an astonishing formulation. The two people despise each other. Should they be running mates –- which will not happen -– whichever was the vice presidential candidate, and possibly vice president, would be entirely out of the government, twiddling thumbs and launching warships, and subject to frequent humiliations from the one who was president.

As my wife said, “Why would you put those two cats in the same sack, except to drown them?”
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I received an automated telephone call Tuesday morning from the American Medical Association. The docs asked me –- and no doubt many thousands of other individuals of Medicare age –- to call our senators and ask them not to approve the changes George the Impaler (OK, they didn't call him that) seeks in the Medicare payment system.

Essentially, the AMA message said, if Bush gets his way, it will be far more difficult for people covered by Medicare to get health care because many doctors will refuse to treat Medicare recipients. They simply won't be able to afford to do the work at the level of pay Bush is demanding.

Quite a few apparently objective analysts agree with the docs.

It's funny, in a way. When I was young, the AMA was a reliably ultra-conservative organization that always supported Republican candidates – and the farther right the better. Now, every doctor I've manage to get talking about politics and health care – that's six or eight over the past year or so – is adamantly a foe of the Bush administration and the right wingers in Congress.

Of course, a great majority of physicians always have cared deeply about the proper practice of medicine and the welfare of their patients. Only now it's clear who's on their side and who isn't.

Nothing like getting your own toes stepped on to cause the eyes to pop open.
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Join me in wishing Adm. William J. Fallon continued good health.

Five uneasy pieces

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:42:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were hit with a nasty pulmonary bug that's making the rounds. She got better, my ailment transformed smoothly, almost gracefully, into pneumonia. I took some new antibiotic, and I got better. Then I got worse again. Unpleasant, not dangerous, but it left me without much physical energy.

With a good deal of time available and inadequate push for other things, my mind went it's own way. Besides the state of our economy, about which I've been reading and thinking for many months, five topics kept popping up in my head, over and over, turning this way and that and sometimes interfering with my sleep.

That's where the following five essays came from.

Having got them quiet by means of writing, I am now going to post three very brief observations – just a paragraph or two each -- on other topics and then shut down for a week or so. There are others things to do.

jcf

Piece 1: Pawlenty; pretty but poisonous

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:29:00 +0000

Beware America.

As bizarre as it seems to a reasonably informed citizen of the state, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty still is being considered as a running mate for John McCain. Should he be chosen, there's a very good chance he'll be in the hunt for the presidency in 2012.

Minnesota has only 10 electoral votes, and no candidate from the state can be counted on to win in neighboring states. Our neighbors don't have much electoral clout anyway.

Far more importantly, Pawlenty has been a stunningly negative force in the life of my home state. He has done more serious damage to the state and its people than any politician, probably any five politicians, in living memory. Even Jesse Ventura, the dummy rassler, didn't do a tenth the harm to our economy, our environment, our educational system, our jobs production, our infrastructure or our health as Pawlenty has done in less than six years.

The man has been a walking disaster for what was until a decade ago a state that stood out among the rest for quality of life, a state that used to be featured on magazine covers as the “state of success” and praised by envious columnists and editorial writers all over the country.

Our average income was higher than those of most other states and the cost of living lower than many. Unemployment rates were substantially lower than elsewhere even during recessions. Our educational levels were so high that industry flowed into the state despite the corporate elite's whining about tax levels. The percentage of citizens who owned their homes was much higher than the national average and the mortgage foreclosure rate was miniscule. Our state budget often was balanced, and there were frequent surpluses even as the quality of our roads and bridges and other infrastructure was kept at a level considered unreachable in much of the rest of the country.

Now, Garrison Keillor to the contrary notwithstanding, we are below average by almost every pertinent measure, and Tim Pawlenty bears much of the responsibility for that fact.

And, oh yes, under Bush admirer Pawlenty our state government has become secretive at times, and signs of corruption in high places are beginning to seep under the Capitol doors, although Smooth Tim remains untouched.

We're becoming a small Texas with bad winters, albeit so far without the horrendous gerrymandering of congressional districts. That probably would have happened had not Democrats regained a small majority in the Legislature 2006.

However, despite all that, and though I hate to say it, Pawlenty would be a great vice presidential candidate for the Republicans.

The awful truth is that although his effect on the state has been wholly negative, even disastrous, Tim Pawlenty continues to have approval ratings of better than 50 percent, sometimes reaching near 70 percent, among Minnesota citizens. Goes to show you how far we fallen in terms of have an informed electorate.

He is the most successful con artist the Republicans have.

Tim serves only one constituency – a very small group of the very rich – but the suburban middle class, though rapidly sinking into the mire, believes in him. Well-off farmers think he is their advocate and friend. Hardscrabble farmers from the northern part of the state, and the many who are scratching out meager livings working two and three part time jobs -- the people who still have “support our troops” bumper stickers on their pickups -- seem to believe that he is a good and kind father to the state.

Ronald Reagan didn't know what Teflon was.

It truly is all in the coating, all in the surface. The Minnesota public, for many years among the best-educated and best informed people in the country, doesn't seem to have the least understanding of the reality beneath the pretty facade.

Here is the real Tim Pawlenty, but don't expect him to stand up:

He is extraordinarily handsome and in fine, slender shape. He wears clothes like a model – perfectly turned out at all times (if he's in jeans, they're new), yet seems so comfortable that his perfect dress appears effortless. His voice is good, but not too good. His manner is sincere and warm. When he talks you want to believe him, and many do without really listening and certainly without checking the truth of what he says.

The substance, such as it is, is something else entirely. I wrote some of it in a piece published July 18, 2007. The facts below include some of that, plus some newer information:

* While a state legislator, Pawlenty became ambitious. As the far right was taking over the state Republican Party machinery, he suddenly and obviously threw over his previously moderate stance and wholly adopted the positions of the extremists on social and economic issues. That earned him the majority leadership in the state House of Representatives.

* He wanted to run for the U.S. Senate in 2002, but the Bush administration already had chosen Norm Coleman for the job. Dick Cheney telephoned Pawlenty and told him not to run for the Senate. Pawlenty clicked his heels and saluted. He ran for governor instead, and won with 44 percent of the vote in a three-way race. He was barely reelected in 2006 despite the fact that his Democratic opponent was a widely disliked individual who was absolutely and openly despised by reporters for the state's biggest newspapers, who did everything they could to cut him down and help Pawlenty. He shows popular in polls, but hasn't run too well, in other words.

* In 2002, even before taking office, Pawlenty went to the executive offices of Northwest Airlines, which has been screwing over its employees and the Minnesota public for generations and which essentially controls air travel to and from the Twin Cities. Tim pledged his support to Northwest's bosses for whatever they wanted at any time. He has delivered.

* Before he was elected governor, Pawlenty, along with many Republican legislators, signed a pledge written by a shadowy organization called the Minnesota Taxpayers League. He swore not to raise or allow the raising of any taxes under any circumstances.

The Taxpayers League, accurately called by some the Taxdodgers League, is a very small organization of very rich people. Most of it's members remain anonymous. The group once claimed a membership of something like 2,000 or 3,000, although it offered no proof of its claim. Some of the members live in Minnesota, but it's not clear that all of them do. (Despite its secrecy, Twin Cities newspapers frequently seek out its full-time mouthpiece for quotes on state policies, and treat it as a legitimate policy organization. They don't even know who funds the outfit or calls the shots.)

* Before his reelection, Pawlenty declined to sign the pledge again. It had drawn considerable unfavorable comment. But he has adhered to the promise and has opposed almost all tax increases, though he allowed a couple of bumps in things he decided to call “user fees,” things that hurt mostly lower-income citizens.

* Like George Bush, he pushed for and got substantial tax cuts for the rich. The cuts included some very small breaks for some of the middle class (just like Bush's) and that made them popular with the uninformed (just like Bush's). The claim was that high Minnesota income taxes were driving business out of the state. In fact, several studies showed that industry continued to move into the state because of the high quality of the work force. Since the tax cuts went into effect, severely damaging education and infrastructure, both business and population growth have slowed substantially.

* The state's unemployment rate has risen dramatically; in May of last year it was worse than the national average for the first time in 30 years, and that doesn't make note of the fact of a substantial shift from high-paying manufacturing and technical jobs to low-paying service and retail jobs.

Minnesota's unemployment rate at the end of 2007 was 4.9 percent, up from 4.4 percent in November. The state lost 2,300 jobs in December, 23,000 in the last six months of 2007, although the country as a whole showed a job gain of 500,000 in the last six months of the year. The state lost jobs in eight of its 11 major industrial sectors, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

* Minnesota's roads had for decades been among the best in the country, despite our harsh winters. Since Pawlenty became governor, Minnesota ranks only slightly behind California in number and severity of traffic jams, and the roads are deteriorating before our eyes and under our wheels.

* Manufacturing in Minnesota has gone into a severe decline. The Minneapolis StarTribune reported March 3, 2008, that manufacturing activity worsened for the third straight month in February and job losses increased.

* Home foreclosures in the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan area doubled in 2006 (before the subprime meltdown) and almost doubled again in 2007, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported. Last year, 13,050 homes were repossessed – a record. In January and February of this year, new foreclosure records were sent in Hennepin County (Minneapolis and suburbs) and Ramsey County (St. Paul and suburbs).

Yes, the entire country is suffering from a massive wave of home foreclosures, but remember that until the Pawlenty years, Minnesota always – always – did better than the rest of the country in such circumstances.

* Defaults on other kinds of loans have skyrocketed, the Star Tribune reported in February. In Hennepin County, alone, the newpaper said, default filings jumped 71 percent, to 9,237, in 2007. That's by a substantial number the highest number of defaults since record keeping began in the 1980s. In one suburban/rural county, default judgments jumped 102 percent last year.

* Personal bankruptcy filings rose 53 percent in Minnesota last year, the Star Tribune reported in January, despite Bush-backed legislation that makes it much more difficult for individuals to file bankruptcy.

* Funding for education has been brutally cut under Pawlenty's direction, and the educational system has suffered greatly as a result. In 2001 the state legislature adopted a plan under which the state would pay almost all K-12 education costs, thus allowing local school districts to lay off property taxes. Pawlenty took office and immediately reneged on the promise. Under his direction, state aid for school districts has been severely reduced, forcing the districts to go back to property taxes. No new taxes? Property taxes have risen greatly in school districts throughout the state, and schools have suffered cuts in teaching staff and types of classes offered. Buildings are literally falling apart in some districts. Class sizes have increased substantially. Rich districts are OK, poorer ones are in deep trouble, the quality of education in some parts of the state is heading toward the level of Mississippi.

* Costs of higher education have risen to the point that many middle classes students, let alone poorer students, have been priced out of school, and the problem grows substantially worse year by year. Pawlenty continues to push for deep cuts in state support for higher education.

* Remember the I35W bridge collapse? Of course you do. Pawlenty stood on the site two or three days after all those people went down and pledged that he'd approve gasoline tax increases and whatever else it would take to assure the integrity of roads and bridges in the state.

He lied.

Almost immediately, back at the Capitol, he began working to see to it that we got “no new taxes” just because a bridge collapsed, others are crumbling, as are key roadways, and, oh yes, people died and were maimed.

In February, Democrats in the Legislature, with the help of six Republicans in the House, overrode a Pawlenty veto of a transportation bill that would increase spending on road and bridge maintenance and building, as well as on mass transit.

House Republicans, with Pawlenty's express support, punished the six rebels by stripping them of key committee positions and some of them, at least, have lost party support for re-election. The party has chosen more loyal right wingers to run against them. Pawlenty said he will work to produce a “tax revolt” against all who voted to override the veto.

* A number of Pawlenty's appointments have been every bit as bad as those of George Bush. His secretary of health was forced out by the Legislature after it was revealed that for a year, until caught by outsiders, she had covered up what amounts to an epidemic of a rare form of cancer among employees of an iron-ore processing plant in northern Minnesota.

Carol Molnau is Minnesota's elected secretary of state. She also was until recently secretary of transportation, appointed by Pawlenty. She took a lot of heat over the years, but especially since the collapse of the I35W bridge, for disorganization and incompetence and a refusal to do anything about deteriorating bridges and roads. This year, with a new Democratic majority, the Legislature fired her from the appointed job.

It has since been learned that in 2000, Molnau, then a state legislator, was the author of a bill that ended a long delay of plans to build a new Hwy. 212 in her area of the state. She was, at the time, chairwoman of the very powerful House Transportation Finance Committee. She did not mention that she owned some land in the little city of Chaska in close proximity to the Hwy. 212 route, nor that she was negotiating to sell the property to a large land developer. She and her husband sold the property eight days after the bill approving the highway construction was signed by then Gov. Jesse Ventura. She says she didn't benefit from the road building because the highway didn't immediately abut the property she and hubby sold. The timing was “happenstance,” she claims.

* Pawlenty, while standing firmly against any increases in taxes that might hit his rich sponsors, has needed to do some things to keep the state from caving in. So, in Bush fashion, he and his right wing legislative supporters borrowed. And borrowed. And borrowed. They even tried to borrow from the bidders for a state highway construction contract, but the contractors didn't bite.

The state budget forecast issued in February says that the deficit for the 2008-09 biennium will hit almost $1 billion.

As in 2003, when the state also had a very big deficit, Pawlenty sternly stated that rather than any tax increases (or reduction of the big tax breaks he gave the very wealthy), there will be more drastic cuts in state spending for things like health care, education, programs such as day care and child-care subsidies for the working poor and all those other things the right sees as frivolous.

There's much more, but this already is long, so just one more point: It's as close as you can come to a sure thing that Tim Pawlenty never will be found messing around with whores, or in any other kind of sex scandal.

Maybe that makes everything else all right in the eyes of the faithful of twilight America.