Month: May 2008

A Mighty Howl

by tristero

Today, Somerby makes a point that can never be made often enough: There is something seriously, profoundly, institutionally wrong with the way our political news is reported. Here, he takes apart an incredibly revealing article by John Judis in which he – Judis – gets his facts wrong and then admits that, rather than providing objective coverage, the press “threw their support” behind Obama. In their wisdom, they decided the notion of a “first black president” was more important than a “first female president.” And besides, the poor press was suffering from “Clinton fatigue -” Judis’ actual phrase.

Now, it’s important to remember something, people. It’s not the case that the mainstream press is merely narcissistically self-important and throws their support without telling you to one candidate or another. It’s much more complicated than that.

In certain cases, such as in the fight against “intelligent design creationism” the press assumes a faux-objective stance, giving a scoundrel like Ken Hamm inordinate amounts of free space without checking up on his background or assessing the weight of the ideas. Fortunately that’s been muted somewhat since Kitzmiller v. Dover, but faux-objectivity lives on in, for example, Michael Gordon’s often bizarre reporting as fact the deliberately misleading propaganda of the Bush administration vis a vis Iraq and Iran.

In other words, something close to the entire worldview of the mainstream political/cultural press is alarmingly askew. While posing as objective, they make specious, empty-headed judgments about presidential candidates, then without telling us, “throw their support” behind one rather than another. And, when genuine judgment is absolutely necessary to ascertain the substance behind a source’s assertions, the press is often AWOL.

It goes beyond the press having a conservative bias, although that is part of it. It is, in fact, a massive incapacity/refusal to do the actual job of reporting actual news. Sure, journalism has had few golden eras. But what we’ve seen in the past 20 plus years, and especially in the past 10, is breathtakingly awful journalism.

There are exceptions, of course, and we know who they are: Krugman, Hersh, the McClatchy reporters, and others. But, as Somerby constantly reminds us, these voices barely matter until it is too late. The press has the power to bamboozle its constituency, the American people. And they have, over and over again. It is extremely dangerous for a country half as powerful as the United States to have a media as dysfunctional as this one. It is downright terrifying to think of the damage they have done over the past eight years by elevating Bush to the status of a serious candidate and denigrating Gore, then Kerry.

Special note: I don’t have a BFF when it comes to the top of the pack among the Democrats. The Dems are brimming with potentially great presidents, including but not limited to Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and Kerry (again, that’s for starters). Simply because this post is sympathetic to the disgraceful treatment Clinton received at the hands of the press is hardly a reason to assume I dislike Obama. In fact, I like him a lot, think he would make an incredibly great president, and given that he is almost certain to be the nominee, will enthusiastically pull the lever for him. This is not about Obama OR Clinton, but about a press that, despite having no knowledge and no qualifications, believes it has a duty to skew highly influential coverage and thereby skew elections. It doesn’t; it’s a travesty of a democracy that it is doing so with impunity. And a lot of people have needlessly died directly because of the coverage of Bush the mainstream press mishandled, and continues doing.

Fishers, Hunters, And St. John McCain

by tristero

Please watch this incredible video, compiled by Bruce Wilson and consider the dreadful fact that American politics has sunk so low that a major party’s presumptive candidate is “proud” to have the endorsement of this psycho:

In fairness to PyschoPastor Hagee, his anti-Catholic screeds (calling the Church “The Great Whore” and the like) should not go unremarked. He’s not merely an anti-semite. He hates everyone who doesn’t think (I use the term loosely) like him.

Nor, despite the size of his congregation, is Hagee the real issue. McCain’s character is. A fool who would actively seek out this loon’s endorsement. A moral coward – yes, coward – who would equivocate about denouncing such ideas and the bigots who hold them.

Such a person is not a serious candidate for president. Which is not to say he has no chance; he does. But only if the mainstream media gets away with refusing to expose him for what he is. I hesitate to leap on the paranoid bus and say the media is actively suppressing knowledge of how crazy Hagee is in order to prop up McCain, but if Bruce Wilson’s documentation of Hagee’s intoleration – and McCain’s refusal to dissociate himself with him – doesn’t lead to headlines and tv news stories, then there is little choice but to think They are up to no good.

h/t:Sam Stein.

Crossing All Lines

by digby

I keep hearing chatter about a rockin’ post-partisan general election campaign with Obama-Hagel and McCain-Lieberman duking it out in the fall.

What do you think?

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What Glenn Says

by tristero

It’s hard to improve on this, so I won’t try:

…Those who were most responsible for selling this devastating and grotesque war to the public — and O’Hanlon and his “Brookings colleague Ken Pollack” played as large a role in that as anyone — insist that what they did not be held against them, that it shouldn’t affect how their “expertise and scholarship” are perceived nor undermine their standing and credibility in any way. As O’Hanlon’s fellow war “scholar” Anne-Marie Slaughter petulantly protested a couple months ago: “The debate is still far too much about who was right and who was wrong on the initial invasion.” The only unfairness they voice — the only thing that provokes their passion or moves them to anger — is when they are excessively criticized for their war support. To them, that’s the grave injustice in all of this.

The only way one can think that way — the only way one can be so haughty and self-absorbed and unremorseful — is through complete indifference to the effects of their actions. There’s just no other way to be so relentlessly self-justifying and even indignant in the face of criticisms over their war support except by blocking out, just ignoring, the extreme, totally pointless human suffering and slaughter for which they’re responsible. Whether to attack Iraq and then whether to continue the occupation endlessly as we’ve done are far and away the most significant political questions of this generation. To act as though it’s just one of many interesting policy questions to add to someone’s “homework” tally is just staggering.

Twenty years from now, the Michael O’Hanlons and Ken Pollacks and various Kagan Family members of today are going to be viewed the way the Robert McNamaras of the Vietnam era came to be perceived: as coddled, sheltered monsters who — from a safe and sterile distance — viewed and endlessly cheered on “war” as some abstract, intellectualized and fun game to play at think tank parties, totally oblivious to the savagery and havoc it wreaked on other people’s lives. Perhaps in old age, they’ll write some self-flagellating, McNamara-like mea culpa. But nobody else needs to wait until then to describe what they actually are.[Emphasis added.]

To paraphrase a trope from a few years ago, if you’re not sick with shame at what your government’s done and is doing to Iraq, you haven’t been paying attention.

You Can Believe Us

by digby

… or you can believe your lying eyes.

It’s been quite amusing reading and watching the media absolve itself of sexism over the past few days but I think it’s getting a little bit out of hand when Republican “analysts” blithely assert during election coverage on national television that Senator Clinton can accurately be described as a “white bitch” — and everyone calmly sits around discussing whether it’s true or not. In fact, it’s mind boggling:

(Thanks to Jeffrey Toobin having the guts to speak the obvious.)

Earlier in the day I saw Tim Russert complaining on MSNBC about how wrong it is for Clinton to suggest that the media has been sexist, when the problem is “the math.” You don’t get much more lunk-headed than that. Actually, I take that back. Here’s some self-serving tripe from the obviously resentful fellow who kissed Matthews’ ring after paying the price for the man’s sexist sins (and later presented a pen featuring Clinton’s witchy “cackle” to Tucker“when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs” Carlson):

David Shuster, the correspondent, explains it all away: “Attacking the media is not new. Presidents and politicians have been doing it for a long time, usually to deflect their own problems, often to tap into a perceived voter hostility towards journalists. The problem for Hillary Clinton is that her charges may reinforce concerns about her credibility.”

The notion that it is “perceived” voter hostility toward journalists is just funny. There is real, ongoing hostility toward journalists among a large number of the public for many reasons. Press “credibility” is nearly at the same level as used car salesmen on a good day.

SO many Americans apparently now see journalists as self-interested, careerist and unprofessional that perhaps it would make sense for media executives to call up another group of bosses who once faced fundamental questions about their product: the makers of Tylenol in the 1980’s.

[…]

American confidence in the news media is at an all-time low. Most other major institutions in public life – while dealing with their own credibility issues – are more trusted.

In the post-Watergate 1970’s, some 25 to 30 percent of Americans reported to the Harris Poll that they had a great deal of confidence in the press, more than they had in Congress, unions or corporate America. In the 2005 poll, the press ranked only ahead of law firms, with 12 percent reporting high confidence in the media.

Another poll, in 2003 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that 66 percent of Americans see news reports as slanted, compared with 53 percent in 1985. Even more stunning to some analysts, 32 percent judged news organizations to be immoral, up from 13 percent in 1985.

“Today we have a case where the public is suspicious of the values of the news media as well,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. “I don’t know if it’s a crisis, but it’s a hell of a growing problem.”

The juvenile, demeaning behavior Shuster and his cohorts have displayed during this campaign has taken their credibility further into the sewer. Last night we saw the creepy GOP operative who put together the famous Jesse Helms “white hands” ad unctuously pontificating on the Democratic primary on CNN, saying that calling Clinton a “white bitch” is simply an accurate statement.(In a previous primary night broadcast the same man had said that it was time to “take the old family dog to the vet and have her put to sleep.”) Earlier this year, MSNBC featured “expert” commentary by Roger Stone, the GOP dirty trickster, who bragged in the Weekly Standard about creating a group called C.U.N.T, to oppose Clinton’s candidacy. We all know about Chris Matthews’ ongoing insanity, the endless stuff about the psycho female “Fatal Attraction” archetype and all the rest. This isn’t just a few offhand comments. It has been a campaign narrative.

I don’t think that it’s fair or reasonable for the Obama campaign to be held responsible for this. I’ve not detected sexism coming from them toward Senator Clinton, certainly in any systematic way. I suspect they have been quite conscious of not going there, which is to their credit. Many Clinton supporters feel that Obama has benefited from the sexism in the media and should have stood up to it, but I just reject that. Both he and Clinton are fighting hard campaigns for the most important job in the world and they are not obligated to defend their rivals while the battle rages. (It might have behooved the progressive movement to have done so, however.)

Unfortunately, at this point I think the media is actually hurting the Obama campaign with their continued sexist coverage. He is trying to reach out to her supporters and the press is making it much harder for him by keeping this hostile, demeaning discussion — particularly this endless call for her to drop out — roiling in the ether. The party will work this out, but the media, as usual, is making things worse.

I know that many of you believe that Clinton should drop out and that will solve everything. But that’s not exactly true. This ugly treatment of Clinton has left a bad taste in many people’s mouths and at this point, it’s probably necessary for her to see it through and leave the race on her own terms. Obama’s campaign certainly seems to recognize that this needs to be handled respectfully and sensitively.

I would have thought that all decent people would be appalled that the media in this country thinks it’s ok for their commentators to identify a female candidate for president as a bitch on national TV or sell sickening “jokes” like Hillary Nutcrackers in the CNBC stores in airports all over the country. One would think it was a given that they shouldn’t reward people who start groups called C.U.N.T with TV appearances or imply that someone who nearly half the Democratic party has chosen as their presidential candidate is a psychotic stalker who refuses to die. Is it really too much to ask that the media show more respect than that?

Update: I just heard Chris Cilizza suggest on MSNBC that this charge of sexism is impossible to quantify, but Obama is winning partially because he turned his historic candidacy into a movement, while Clinton failed to turn hers into one. That may be true. But I can’t see how she ever could have done it with coverage like this:

THE NOTE: Clinton Plays Gender Card
Gender Card: Hillary Clinton auditions for victim role
By RICK KLEIN with MIKE CHESNEY

Nov. 2, 2007 —

A moment of silence, please, for Invincible Hillary. She left us at 11 am ET yesterday, in Wellesley, Mass., a victim of her own hand. She was 10 months old. She is survived by Victim Hillary.

“In so many ways this all women’s college prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said yesterday at her alma mater, Wellesley College.

This from the frontrunner, the wire-to-wire leader, the choice of the Democratic establishment, the candidate of strength, determination, experience. In the context of her poor debate performance, with all her (male) rivals sensing an opportunity to chip away at her 30-point lead, this is called playing the gender card.

She was trying to speak to women about the challenges they face in the world (and, I’m sorry, they do exist or the 50% of the population that is female would currently hold more than 12% of senate seats and we would have had a woman president by now.) Her even mentioning it was derisively called “playing the gender card.” She had no chance to create a “movement” (if indeed she ever wanted to) based around her historic candidacy.

I think she made some serious strategic errors that were far more salient in her winding up in (a very close) second place. But let’s not pretend that she was given even the slightest room to run explicitly as the first female candidate, because from the beginning the press used demeaning, sexist stereotypes with zero restraint. And the sad thing is that it is so commonplace in our culture that many people, including women, didn’t even notice.

Update II: For those who need an explanation as to why calling a woman a bitch on a national news network is wrong, this comment threat from TPM does it about as well as anything I’ve seen.

Update III: This makes me want to puke.

Update IV: The Howler hits this today as well.

Update V: Echidne explains why this isn’t about supporting Hillary Clinton, but rather about supporting women like your daughters, wives, moms and sisters.

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Stuck

by dday

Bob Gates says we’re stuck with that Guantanamo prison. Just nothing we can do about it.

Mr Gates told a US Senate hearing: “The brutally frank answer is that we’re stuck. We have a serious ‘not in my backyard’ problem.

“Either their home government won’t accept them or we’re concerned that the home government will let them loose once we return them home,” he said.

“What do you do with that irreducible 70 or 80 who you cannot let loose but will not be charged and will not be sent home?” he asked.

Dianne Feinstein, who has been good on this issue, brushed up against this point, but Gates makes an enormous understatement when he says that those 70 or 80 “will not be charged.” He fails to give the reason why, because they’ve been tortured to obtain information that wouldn’t hold up even in their kangaroo courts. Yesterday the Congress heard from a detainee who was tortured and subsequently found to be innocent:

Murat Kurnaz told members of Congress today he was subjected to “water treatment,” electric shocks and other abuse during the almost five years he spent in U.S. custody, putting a face to the Justice Department’s inspector general report released today, detailing abuses witnessed by FBI agents overseas at detention facilities run by the military and CIA.

Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen, was arrested in Pakistan in late 2001 after the 9/11 attacks while he traveled with a religious tourism group, and was eventually handed over to U.S. forces. He was held in U.S. facilities in Afghanistan and then at Guantanamo Bay.

Speaking to the House Foreign Affairs Committee via video link from Germany with his lawyer at his side, Kurnaz described how he was abused while he was held at a U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and described how he was subjected to “water treatment” while in custody.

“They stuck my head into a bucket of water and punched me in the stomach,” he said. “I inhaled the water. … It was a strong punch.”

Kurnaz testified that, although he had no links to al Qaeda, and German intelligence services told U.S. officials in 2002 that he was not a terrorist, he languished at Guantanamo until August 2006.

While he was detained in Kandahar, Kurnaz testified, he was chained by his arms to the ceiling with his feet dangling and subjected to electric shocks. Kurnaz also alleges U.S. interrogators tried to force him to sign papers admitting his guilt.

These 70 and 80, whom the Pentagon claims are guilty, received the same treatment. But the claim against sending them to their home countries has always been that they would be tortured or killed by their governments. So we insourced the torture and played buddy-buddy with those new authoritarian partners.

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

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

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

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

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

“Why are we doing China’s dirty work?” Manning said. “Surely we’re better than that.”

Surely we’re not. We’ve now become a country with an extra-judicial detention system, one where suspects can be held, tortured, interrogated, and left to die without charges, where the prisoners see the only escape as suicide.

We’ve now become a country where we aid the Chinese in their own repression of ethnic minority groups.

We’ve now become a country where all of this is done and our own Secretary of Defense tells us he’s very sorry but we can’t stop.

If you think one election will wash all this away, you’re crazy.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, and the FBI created a chart to list what acts of torture were personally witnessed or discussed by prisoners during investigations into abuse. The charts show it was all systematic and widspread. It’s that banality of evil reduced to a spreadsheet.

This was done in your name.

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Turn Out

by digby

Primary turnout NOT a record, study says

Despite a surge of voting in many states, national primary turnout this year is falling short of the record, set in 1972. Overall turnout thus far has reached 30.2 percent of eligible voters, short of the reord 30.9 percent set in 1972, according to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate at American University. Democrats set records in 23 states, but their overall turnout of 19.3 percent fell short of the 21 percent turnout in 1972, when the party nominated George McGovern. Republicans set records this year in 10 states, but their overall turnout of 10.8 percent fell short of higher turnout in 2000, 1980, and 1976.
What does it mean for the fall? “High primary turnout does not necessarily augur high general election turnout,” says Curtis Gans, director of the center. “In 1972, the year of the highest presidential primary turnout, turnout in the general election experienced the largest decline (5.3 percent) of any election since World War II… “Rather, it is very likely that this fall’s election will have high turnout because of the issues which will be in play and the economic condition of the nation.”

Yes, I think we can count on that. In 1972 there was a popular incumbent running which is very, very different than this situation, as you well know. The country is in deep shit and everyone knows it.

But this history shows we shouldn’t take anything for granted. Every possible GOTV operation known to Democrats must be deployed in November.

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Paper Training

by digby

Glenn Greenwald has the run down on a new campaign to educate Chris Carney’s constituents about his unAmerican activities. He’s not going to like it:

A major new ad campaign aimed at freshman Democratic Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania will begin this week. The campaign — funded by donations from readers of several blogs — will swamp Carney’s Northeastern Pennsylvania district with a coordinated series of ads on television stations and top-rated radio programs, full-page ads in six out of seven of the largest newspapers in Carney’s district, and strategically placed billboards on major roads. The impetus and rationale for the ad campaign was explained here. The campaign arises out of the leading role Carney has been playing in pressuring the House to vest the President with vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to bestow amnesty to telecoms which illegally allowed warrantless spying by the Bush administration on their own customers. Carney has received substantial campaign contributions from several of the telecoms which stand to benefit most from the amnesty he supports.
Carney is a so-called “Blue Dog” Democrat who continuously sides with the Bush administration and supports its most radical policies. In addition to his leading role in demanding warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, he has repeatedly voted against timetables to end the war in Iraq. He is a close associate of Douglas Feith, with whom he worked on pre-war “intelligence” at the Rumsfeld Pentagon, and Carney still claims that “there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.” Unsurprisingly, then, Carney has spoken out against Congressional investigations into those responsible for pre-war intelligence “failures” (which would include himself and Feith), calling such investigations a “major distraction.” Among his most enthusiastic supporters in 2006 was Richard Perle.

I don’t think you need to know much more than that.

Here’s the TV ad:

Here’s the newspaper ad:

Glenn concludes:

This campaign against Carney is intended to be but the first of its kind, a template, for conveying to Beltway Democrats that there will be a price to pay, real consequences, when they support the most radical, destructive and corrupt right-wing policies. There is widespread consensus that no matter what happens, House Democrats will substantially increase their margin this year. But if — as appears to be the case — a bulk of that increase comes from “Blue Dogs” like Carney, then it will make little difference. In fact, it might even be worse, since the effect of “Blue Dogs” is measured by far more than just the number of votes they cast. They essentially ensure that the Bush-following faction of the GOP maintains a working majority in Congress. That is true particularly if there continues to be no incentive for Congressional Democrats to pay attention to their base and do anything other than support the right-wing agenda, because they perceive that they only pay a price when they oppose the Right. That is the incentive scheme that has to change. […]
Because the core goal of the Blue America PAC is to support worthy Democratic candidates (such as Burner, Edwards, Grayson and Schulman), a new organization is now being created, and one of its principal purposes will be to coordinate and fund ad campaigns of the type directed now at Carney. That will be unveiled shortly. Until then, those who want to contribute to the Carney ad campaign — which will enable even more ads to be purchased in his district or which will enable similar ads to run against other House members supporting amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping — can do so here.

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Life’s Work

by digby

I’m very sorry that Senator Kennedy is facing the challenge of brain cancer and I hope he will have a full recovery. My mother died of the same thing many years ago and it’s a tough road.

But may I just point out how distasteful it is that the gasbags are giving a continuous eulogy for someone who’s still alive? If I were him, I don’t think I’d appreciate it.

I also can’t help but be stuck by the irony of the fact that they keep mentioning that he will get the best medical care in the world. It’s true, of course. He is not only a multi-millionaire but also a member of congress and the taxpayers pay for them to have the kind of insurance that most of us can only dream of these days. (Of course, among others who are also so privileged are the commentators who keep exclaiming about the exceptional medical care he’s receiving.)

I certainly don’t begrudge him the best of care and I doubt that anyone with a sense of decency would. But the fact that he has been the biggest champion, unsuccessfully, for universal health care for all Americans makes the whole discussion about his marvelous care somewhat dissonant. The last thing anyone should have to deal with when they or a family member gets a diagnosis like this is whether or not they will be able to get proper care or whether their financial lives will be ruined because of it. But for most of us, that is very much a priority when these things happen and a good many of us can’t count on getting the best health care in the world even though we live in a country that well provides it to those who can afford it.

Somehow, I don’t think this would escape Ted Kennedy. But the broadcasters, unsurprisingly, seem to be completely oblivious to it.

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What Terrible News

by dday

Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. From what I’m reading, this is a very aggressive kind of tumor, and the lifespan isn’t really long – maybe 18 months to two years. Kennedy’s nothing if not a fighter, but this is a tough one.

The man is a legend and has devoted his life to liberal causes, and there simply aren’t that many of those people out there. The institutional memory of the Senate embodied in him is incalculable. What a blow.

It’s very sad.

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