Clarifying the Muck

David Sirota, as usual, does a spectacular job unmasking Louise Slaughter and the professional Democratic politicians.

Needless to say, the endgame in the Middle East is coming down to a 12 Step solution:

Codependency--"A psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition (as an addiction to alcohol, heroin", [or power]

Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., Mirriam Webster, Inc., Springfield, MA; 1998; p. 221.

Well, Duhhhhhhhhhhh!

Admitted we were powerless over _________________, and that our lives had become unmanageable.

Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Being such a "Christian nation," I doubt we'll get anywhere close to step 3:

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

What could be clearer, then?

Can you spell, " M-O-N-E-Y ?"

I had that kind of bitter sense of amusement today reading, A New Silent Majority, by Marc Buchanan in the Times. It's part of a regular opinion column he writes, apparently, applying the principles of physical science to the social/political sphere.

The Times calls him a theoretical physicist.

OK. So what?

He makes a great case that the "mainstream" (hereinafter, "commercial") media are out of synch with the public--reporting prevailing opinions that are actually unpopular, minority positions and focusing on stories and scandals that the public finds irrelevant.

Buchanan offers some different explanantions for this discrepancy.

A common explanation of this tendency toward distortion is that the beltway media has attended a few too many White House Correspondents’ Dinners and so cannot possibly cover the administration with anything approaching objectivity. No doubt the Republicans’ notoriously well-organized efforts in casting the media as having a “liberal bias” also have their intended effect in suppressing criticism.

Then he proffers his pet explanation--the scientific theory.

But I wonder whether this media distortion also persists because it doesn’t meet with enough criticism, and if that’s partially because many Americans think that what they see in the major political media reflects what most other Americans really think – when actually it often doesn’t.
Psychologists coined the term “pluralistic ignorance” in the 1930s to refer to this type of misperception — more a social than an individual phenomenon — to which even smart people might fall victim.

So, he goes on to commit the very misinformation he's claiming to demystify.

He never mentions that the reason commercial news media try to tell the public to think in terms contrary to the public's own conscience is that the media sponsors want to promulgate those opinions, and the media companies do, too.

Buchanan plays the role of masker, suggesting this misrepresentation of public opinion is a mistake, or a matter of shyness.

Yet in the classroom of our democracy, at least for many in the media, it still seems impolitic – or at least a little too risky – to raise one’s hand.

He actually has the arrogance to liken it to the shyness of students in a classroom, afraid to raise their hand for fear of being the only one to think something.

Whatever your broadcast network, whatever your cable station, whatever your talk radio, you are hearing what the media companies and their sponsors want you to hear. They lie about everything, why shouldn't they tell you that their opinion is really YOUR opinion, too?

If they say it enough, you'll believe it.

But that is Buchanan's saving grace. He is onto the symptoms. He is just wrong about the illness. Still, he's the only one out there saying this.

At least he's honest, which is more than we can say about our Representatives in Washington, or the commercial media "reporting" on their governance.

Look at It This Way

When the IPCC report first came out, there was a lot of hoopla in the corporate media about how exaggerated the predictions were.

The scientific community and the public media were complaining, however, that the predictions were too watered-down, catering to the oil lobby and their drones in Washington.

So, now, at least, we get to bark up the other side of the same tree. Will anybody listen anyway?

CO2 emissions from cars, factories, and power plants grew at an annual rate ... higher than any rate used in emissions scenarios for the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This was on Alternet today, courtesy of Peter R. Spotts.

In the Zone

From Thomas Wagner in an Associated Press article, dated May 16, linked here in the Huffington Post:

The Green Zone, a sprawling complex on the west bank of the Tigris River, also was hit by a rocket Tuesday, wounding nine foreigners. Fintor said he could not provide specific nationalities but they were not Americans or Iraqis.

A recent increase in mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and major Iraqi government offices, has raised concern, especially since they are occurring during the U.S.-led crackdown.

USA Today echoes the surge dirge in an op ed piece by pointing out that,

At this midpoint between announcement and verdict, it is too early to say whether the surge is working. Not all the extra troops are in place. Nor is there agreement on how to measure progress. But the preliminary indicators are far from encouraging ...

America's newspaper then goes on to list three reasons for believing that, in fact, the surge isn't working.

None of the three reasons, by the way, were "increased attacks on the Green Zone."

Illegal Wiretapping (reprise)

Glenn Greenwald pierces the soft underbelly of Congress and their Bush Administration fascist co-conspirators:

We enacted a law 30 years ago making it a felony for the government to eavesdrop on us without warrants, precisely because that power had been so severely and continuously abused. The President deliberately violated that law by eavesdropping in secret. Why don't we know -- a-year-a-half after this lawbreaking was revealed -- whether these eavesdropping powers were abused for improper purposes? Is anyone in Congress investigating that question? Why don't we know the answers to that?

His big point is that Comey intimated that prior to 2004, when the illegal wiretapping program was running unchecked by DOJ, they were wiretapping everybody they wanted -- not just terrorists.

And, furthermore:

How can we possibly permit our government to engage in this behavior, to spy on us in deliberate violation of the laws which we enacted democratically precisely in order to limit how they can spy on us, and to literally commit felonies at will, knowing that they are breaking the law?

But the kicker is the letter in the Washington Post from 60 members of the Harvard law school class of 1982 to Alberto Gonzales:

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Democratic Sell Out?

David Sirota has an alarming post up on DKos, vividly outlining the unfolding Trade Deal between the White House and Democratic leaders.

Steven Weisman of the Times reports that the agreements the parties reached "guarantee workers the right to organize, ban child labor and prohibit forced labor in trading-partner countries. It would also require trading partners to enforce environmental laws already on their books."

I'm skeptical. Why would we need an agreement to enforce laws that already exist, unless we really had no intention of ever enforcing them?

I'm also curious as to whether Pelosi and the Democratic leaders believe that the enforcement of international labor standards guaranteeing workers the right to form unions is going to include the United States of America. Is there going to be some international trade body that the United States will submit to judgment over fair labor practices?

Meanwhile, everybody involved in the negotiations is patting themself on the back.

“I think today is a recognition of the results of the November election,” Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference. “It doesn’t mean that this paves the way for trade agreements where we have other obstacles. But where it comes down to labor standards and environment, this is enormous progress.”

As Sirota says, there's so much riding on the terms of this agreement as far as the future direction of trade, but we don't even know the specifics of any of the provisions yet.

we have not yet seen the details of this deal. While the secrecy and this information aggregated in this dispatch certainly raises very serious concerns about what the White House and this handful of Democrats are trying to hide, we have to reserve final judgment on what the deal ultimately means until these players decide to disclose their deliberations to the American public.

Nonetheless, there are very real reasons to be concerned.

I'm skeptical.