Deplorables of the Deep State

While the nation ostensibly mourns the thousands of victims of the 9/11 attacks today, thousands of elite pathocrats and plutocrats are cackling, silently yet maniacally. September 11th is the permanent catastrophe that keeps right on giving to them. It's always Christmas for the Deep Security State, a behemoth so big and so unaccountable and so flush with cash that even the president himself cannot be aware of all its myriad moving parts. 

As reported by Dana Priest and William Arkin, 9/11 has spawned a virtual Fourth Branch of government which grows secretly and exponentially with every passing anniversary of the attacks:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Therefore, all the president can do to try and control the permanent War on Terror is to renew America's State of Emergency for a 16th straight year, and continue issuing proclamations and uttering platitudes about the Nine Eleven Generation. These are the young people who have never known a day when their nation has not been at war.  Although the marketing campaigns are creepily similar, they are not to be confused with the Pepsi Generation. That might be way too crass.

Crass, my ass: Coke, in true capitalistic competitive spirit, marked our great national day of hegemony and death by constructing a Twin Towers replica made entirely out of soda cans. To add insult to injury, they built it in a Florida Walmart. The marketing geniuses apparently didn't realize the display was in bad taste until thousands of shoppers told them so, and the exhibit was duly removed by $8-an-hour associates with no company health insurance benefits.

Meanwhile, 9/11 continues to be very, very good for neoliberal capitalism. As Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee writes in his Diary of a Bad Year, 

The bogeyman Osama bin Laden has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Armed with nothing but Kalashnikovs and plastic explosives, he and his followers have terrorized and demoralized the West, driving nations into wholesale panic. To the bullying, authoritarian, militaristic strand in Western political life, Osama has been a gift from the gods.

No matter that U.S. special forces executed a cowering Osama in 2012 in the run-up to Barack Obama's re-election campaign. The patriotic spirit of terror lives on, with or without him.

The September 11 attacks were the pretext to invade Iraq a year and half later.  Nearly 7,000 U.S. service people and at least a quarter of a million civilians have died since the start of the war, which continues with the deployment of at least a thousand new Gen-9/11 troops to fight Isis. Obama's drones have murdered at least hundreds of innocent women and children in areas with whom this country is not even officially at war.

Bill Quigley writes:

Since 9/11 US spending on our military cost well over $3 trillion. Direct combat and reconstruction costs for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11 have officially cost US taxpayers $1.6 trillion dollars according to the Congressional Research Service.   Additional trillions have been spent on growing the Pentagon budget and for present and future increased health and disability benefits for veterans.
The US military captures 55 percent of our national discretionary spending and spending on veterans benefits is another 6 percent. Since 9/11 military spending has increased by 50 percent while spending on other discretionary domestic spending increased by 13 percent according to the National Priorities Project.

War profiteers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have raked in billions of dollars in profits in the 15 years since 9/11. Although Saudi Arabia has been at least indirectly implicated in the attacks, the United States continues to sell that repressive regime billions of dollars worth of arms for the slaughter of Yemeni civilians. President Obama is expected to veto a bill which would allow 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia for monetary damages.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton rails against the millions of Donald Trump supporters who have been carefully and incessantly taught to be Islamophobes by the leaders and corporate media of America. The "deplorables" of Flyover Country simply didn't wake up one morning and start railing against Muslims based upon any direct knowledge or experience. They simply turned on CNN and Fox and MSNBC and watched the sycophantic mass media cozily embed themselves with the American invaders. They learned to think of Muslims as bad guys whose pictures were on decks of cards. "Clash of civilizations" propaganda has been polluting our airwaves with a vengeance for going on two decades.

It seems that Clinton forgot to notice all the rotten eggs of the Military-Industrial complex in her own Basket of Deplorables. Despite an overpowering reek, they're nesting there comfortably in their abundant money grass. Not only have they never been convicted of torture and war crimes, graft and corruption, they are getting pride of place at the gourmet table. And because they're encased in solid gold, there's no danger of them ever getting devoured themselves. People are too weary to develop a taste for rebellion against the forever wars being waged in all our names.

So we turn away in apathy or disgust. And then we hold our noses, and we choose a commander in chief using the parts of our brains which process fear rather than exercising those which enable rational thought.

Infotainment in the Public Interest

Media cyberspace is all a-Twitter over actor Matt Lauer's dismal performance in NBC/Comcast-Universal's poorly scripted "Commander in Chief Forum," broadcast on Wednesday night.

The network staged the festivities in the Intrepid Air, Sea and Space Museum to see whether Matt Lauer would have enough air and space to stick it to two political sharks as intrepidly as he once stuck it to the fake predators in Sharknado 2.

MSNBC seemed to have forgotten that Lauer was quite literally eaten alive in the third episode of the Sharknado franchise. It was his recent star turn in   "grilling" bad boy Ryan Lochte during the Rio Olympics that probably made them think that he could also hold two much more powerful and seasoned storytellers to account.

Lauer challenged Lochte's story about getting robbed at gunpoint, so isn't it logical that he'd also challenge Hillary Clinton's promise not to send ground troops to Iraq and Syria by pointing out that there are already hundreds, if not thousands, of boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria? Who would have thought he'd give Donald Trump a pass over his "secret plan" to defeat Isis? And Lauer unbelievably didn't seem to know that Trump had told shock jock Howard Stern he supported the Iraq War way back when.

 Lauer delivered his scripted questions with all the annoying gravitas that he could muster. But those real sharks sure can get slippery, even when they look fake and sound fake.

Don't blame Lauer, a $28 million-a-year media personality, for not being a real journalist and for treating a presidential election like just another game. Blame his greedy bosses and Wall Street investors and advertisers for making it a spectator sport in the first place and for caring more about ratings and profits than they do about informing the public.

Broadcasting in the public interest has largely gone the way of the rotary phone. People who can still afford cable have neither the time nor the attention spans to devote to mulling over public policy. In any case, there is no longer much of "the public" in neoliberal policies decided by market-based technocrats and military contractors.

  It should come as no surprise that the corporate media-political complex has to make the presidential contest into a reality show to attract our limited attentions and to sell us lots of products. We're consumers, not citizens.

So first, they put on a contrived show with the ostensible purpose of honoring the troops. They invited a few carefully selected, attractive, articulate, not obviously maimed or damaged military veterans to pose questions to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (No Howard Stern trolls were there to spoil things, thank goodness.) The candidates mouthed their platitudes in carefully truncated soundbites, and the viewing audience was urged to feel appropriately guilty about how little we think about the troops and how patriotic we ought to feel.

Next, the candidates tried to instill fear in the viewing audience by pointing out what a violent mess the world is in, and what a violent mess their opponent is. The camera panned to the scowling generals in the audience to further instill the terror and the respect in our hearts and our minds. Or, so the Masters of the Universe are hoping.

Third, Matt Lauer made it all about his vapid self with his frequent outbursts of rudeness and vapidity. He was designed to make us circle the wagons around our favored candidate. And better yet, to pick a side in case we were still undecided or disgusted with both of them.

Finally, the rest of the mass media is fulfilling its own assigned role by making the presidential town hall all about Matt Lauer's horrible acting skills and his basic ignorance, arrogance and ineptitude. The common complaint is that he bullied Hillary over her emails, and gave Donnie a pass. Thus the show fulfilled its useful idiotic purpose of adding more fuel to the Defense of Hillary (DOH) fire. It deflected attention from war for war's sake, to the alleged sexist war on Hillary.

Lauer is being castigated both for being too much of a shark and for acting like a guppy.

  For example, here was Michael Grynbaum's front page New York Times review:

Charged with overseeing a live prime-time forum with Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton — widely seen as a dry run of sorts for the coming presidential debates — Mr. Lauer found himself besieged on Wednesday evening by critics of all political stripes, who accused the anchor of unfairness, sloppiness and even sexism in his handling of the event.

Granted 30 minutes with each candidate, who appeared back-to-back at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan, Mr. Lauer devoted about a third of his time with Mrs. Clinton to questions about her use of a private email server, then seemed to rush through subsequent queries about weighty topics like domestic terror attacks.

When an Army veteran in the audience asked Mrs. Clinton to describe her plan to defeat the Islamic State, Mr. Lauer interjected before the candidate could begin her reply.

“As briefly as you can,” he said, one of several moments where the anchor spoke over Mrs. Clinton to remind her that their time was running short.

Nobody in the mainstream media is questioning this country's pathological addiction to trillion-dollar wars, illegal coups, and drone assassinations, or why and how the Pentagon and the CIA and Homeland Security and the NSA have all become so unaccountable in the first place. They're ignoring the awful reality that the Deep State is now our all-powerful fourth branch of government.

Once upon a time, that honor and duty was reserved for our vaunted free press, a/k/a the intrepid Fourth Estate.

The DOH Also Rises

From the Sardonicky Online Dictionary:

DOH.

1. (noun) acronym for Defense Of Hillary, a loose coalition of liberal pundits joining forces to squelch any and all legitimate criticism of the embattled Democratic Party nominee.

a) Variation: Dohdohs. Centrist and liberal pundits on steroids who are doubling down on their efforts to smear any and all critics of Hillary Clinton as pathological haters, misogynists, secret Trump supporters, and unwitting tools of Vladimir Putin. If you are paying more attention to the content of leaked emails proving Democratic complicity to destroy Bernie Sanders than you are to the source, you are un-American for refusing to join the shoot-the-messenger firing squad.

You might be tempted to confuse Dohdohs with David Brooks's Bobos, the coalition of cool, rich, hip, credentialed Bourgeois Bohemians. The difference is that Dohdohs are all too real, while Bobos are the fever dreams of a right-wing pop sociologist who has since failed upwards to an op-ed perch at the New York Times. (more about that paper soon.) 

 Dohdohs are also not be confused with the Dodo, which went extinct largely because of its trusting stupidity and too much inbreeding on its remote island habitat. Although inbred themselves, Dohdohs are very much alive during these waning days of Neoliberal Death Match 2016.

Duh

2. Doh: (epithet, mild swear word). As immortalized by Homer Simpson, "Doh!" is an inchoate expression of deep chagrin, often accompanied by a slap to the forehead. It is alternately spelled  "D'Oh!" in order to distinguish it from the cheap plasticine glop (Play-Doh) recently distributed by Donald Trump to Baton Rouge flood victims as a cynical substitute for food, medicine, and building supplies.

True

False

For purposes of Hillary Clinton and this blog-post, I propose to combine the two meanings of DOH and make this into a true Clinton-style Third Way initiative:

3) DOH: a coalition of Clinton defenders who are Homerically challenged, chagrined, and sincerely confused that the majority of Americans simply do not trust the living antithesis to the reviled Donald Trump. Instead of violently slapping their foreheads in self-loathing, however, they merely scratch or massage their weary erudite pates as they Tweet and they blog and they editorialize their Defense of Hillary displeasure far and wide.

There Is Nothing Playful About True DOH

The most compulsive self-Tweeting (10,000 ReTweets and counting!) DOH operative this week has got to be habitual Clinton supporter Paul Krugman (pictured above), who brands himself the liberal conscience of the Times. As such, out of an abundance of moral rectitude, his new persona is the heroic scold of journalism. In his latest column, he excoriates the smears and innuendoes of the corporate media against his favored candidate. He is so brave, in fact, that he even "reluctantly" dared to criticize his very own newspaper - without, mind you, taking his daredevil act quite so far as to actually mention his employer and his colleagues by name. But you know who you are, Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy and Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin! Uncle Paul is not well pleased, and neither is his client.

I already covered Krugman's hypocritical DOH in my Monday post. 

But Glenn Greenwald adds some much-needed bulk and spice to the increasingly thin gruel of journalism in the public interest. He reports that the Paper of Record initially even refused to Tweet out Krugman's Number One trending smash hit of a staged morality play.

And, Greenwald drily notes:

Thankfully, it appears that Krugman — at least thus far — has suffered no governmental recriminations or legal threats, nor any career penalties, for his intrepid, highly risky defense of Hillary Clinton.
That’s because — in contrast to his actually brave, orthodoxy-defying work in 2002 as one of the few media voices opposed to the invasion of Iraq, for which he deserves eternal credit — Krugman here is doing little more than echoing conventional media wisdom. That prominent journalists are overwhelmingly opposed to Donald Trump is barely debatable; their collective contempt for him is essentially out in the open, which is where it should be. Contrary to Krugman’s purported expectation, countless Clinton-supporting journalists rushed to express praise for Krugman. Indeed, with very few exceptions, U.S. elites across the board — from both parties, spanning multiple ideologies — are aligned with unprecedented unity against Donald Trump. The last thing required to denounce him, or to defend Hillary Clinton, is bravery.

Not to be outdone in the DOH sweepstakes is Heather "Digby" Parton, who writes in Salon with all the DOH umbrage she can muster. First, she takes aim at the mildy acerbic liberal Chris Cilizza, who had the outrageous effrontery to read the polls and accurately observe:

This election is about voters choosing the least worst candidate. That's where we are in our politics.

11:43 AM - 4 Sep 2016

Digby cannot abide with this particular dude, fuming: 

That jaded comment by a member of the media, however, illustrates something  important. Some members of the press are not just commenting on a reality; they are pushing the theme of two equally unpalatable candidates and it just isn’t true.

 (It's the dreaded dragon of false equivalence raising its ugly jade-green head!)

And then she falls into the convenient trap which holds that since no direct bribery has been proven regarding the Clinton Foundation, it follows that no corruption can possibly exist through the mere co-mingling of a billion-dollar private enterprise and a government agency. After all, everybody else in Washington swims in the incestuous muck, including members of DOH themselves. And if renegade journalists are seen as picking on Hillary and only on Hillary, it just logically follows that such massive buck-raking has been a normal, natural, aboveboard activity all along, making capitalism our democracy absolutely thrive. Or so DOH says. Or if it's dancing that you crave, just DOHsey DOH your public-private partner.

"I had to laugh," Digby wrote chucklingly, "at Sunday’s silly New York Times story about Hillary Clinton hobnobbing with wealthy donors as if that were a shocking display of arrogant elitism. Compare and contrast that with this story from 2012 about President Obama hobnobbing with wealthy donors portrayed as an unpleasant but necessary duty in a time of big money dominance. One cannot escape the fact that Clinton is being held to a different standard."

Oh yeah? Digby obviously didn't read the surfeit of both progressive and mainstream publications (such as here, here, and here) for ample evidence that Obama, too, has been quite harshly criticized for money-grubbing from the rich and famous. He raised an estimated billion dollars during his second campaign, spending unprecedented time and untold gallons of polluting jet fuel on Air Force One en route to Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street for a veritable orgy of odious hobnobbing and legalized bribery. There are plenty of observers who've noted the corruption in the Obama White House - including, most famously, Senator Elizabeth Warren. She aptly noted in 2014 that the current administration, the Bush administration, and the first Clinton administration have all been absolutely lousy with Citigroup executives.

Hillary Clinton is actually unfairly and overprotectively being singled out for immunity by the likes of Krugman, Digby and The Nation's Joan Walsh, to name just three of the teeming DOH brigade. Walsh's tired one-note refrain is that every criticism of Hillary has its deep ugly roots in sexism.

My own personal favorite DOH essay of all time was written by Clinton star surrogate America Ferrara, who currently plays an unbelievably happy and chipper Walmart employee on TV. She far surpasses Krugman, Digby and Walsh, for the sole reason that she doesn't limit herself to simply defending Hillary from the slings and arrows of outrageous journalism. She DOHtingly projects a positive, caring, strong Hillary persona. Because it is not enough to loathe Trump in order to propel Clinton to victory.

America Ferrara announces to all who will listen that "Hillary Thrills the Hell Out of Me!"

Me and Hillary, Netflix and chilling. Photo credit: Derek Garbryszak.

It's a shining example of the kind of positive and fair and acceptable Clintonian journalism that any member of DOH would be proud of, and should strive to emulate every day of their writing careers:

She’s the kind of woman I’d share a bottle of wine with. Maybe this is my vagina’s fault, but maybe I really heart Hillary because I was raised by a single mother who woke up everyday and did the unglamorous and grueling work of providing for her six children. Maybe that’s part of why I’ve come to recognize and admire Hillary for showing up, day in and day out, for the promise of unsexy, slow-going and hard-won progress.

I’d like to literally stream Netflix and chill with Hillary. Seriously, I’d be down to snuggle in onesies with a pint of mint chocolate chip and do a Gilmore Girls binge with Secretary Clinton.

Offense, Not Defense. You Go, Hillary Girl. USA! USA! USA!

Watch out for falling shiny shards from that shattered glass ceiling. And rejoice, ye of little faith. Live, love, laugh and be happy. Stay on the sunny side of life. May a smile be your umbrella protecting you from shards. Empower your brand. Lean In. Preferably toward your right.

Update: A second generation of Dohdohs appears to be rising. Let's call them the Dohdohdohs: pundits who are now making it their crusade to defend the Hillary Defenders. See, for example, this outraged screed bashing the critics bashing Paul Krugman for bashing the Hillary bashers.

Oh, and about that coughing fit adding even more fodder to the newer journalistic genre of Hillary health-bashing. It's not that she had a severe coughing fit that has me worried. It's that she tried to talk her way through it instead of sitting down to rest and maybe take a discreet puff or two of Albuterol to relax her airways. Trying to brazen your way through a medical crisis to show how tough you are is never a good idea. I know. I've been there, done that, much to my detriment.

Privatizing the Kill List

Facing a shortage in credentialed military personnel, the Obama administration is outsourcing part of its drone assassination program to unaccountable corporations. What could possibly go wrong?

According to the government, nothing much. You see, the private contractors operating the drones aren't actually allowed to pull the trigger on the "militants" (defined by the CIA as all males in "tribal areas" in the primes of their lives) whom they are tasked with suspecting and surveilling and identifying as bad guys.

From the New York Times:

 But there is no limit on the type of reconnaissance they can perform, and they are providing live video feeds of battles and special operations.

As the Obama administration has accelerated its campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and Libya over the past 10 months, the Pentagon has added four drones flown by contractors to the roughly 60 that are typically flown every day by uniformed Air Force personnel.

This is adding mission creep to the mission creep. Today it's four, tomorrow it's eight. Because drones gotta fly and military contractors like Boeing and Raytheon gotta profit.

For purposes of absolving politicians and Pentagon officials of any personal accountability for their extra-judicial killing sprees,

 The number and identities of contractors working on the drone flights are considered classified information, the Air Force said. But Pentagon officials said there are at least several hundred contractors, many of them former drone or fighter pilots who are making double or triple their military salaries.

Where, they must be asking themselves, do I sign up for this gig at triple my lousy grunt salary? Why risk my life flying an airplane when I can retire early and make big bucks operating a joystick out of an air-conditioned trailer?

All of a sudden, within the same New York Times article, there are hundreds of eager beavers vying for only a handful of official drone control jobs. So here's the implicit message: let's artificially improve the United States employment rate by creating hundreds of new jobs building and operating a drone fleet on steroids. It gives a whole new meaning to trickle-down economics. Instead of trickling down, though, the benefits buzz around in the sky for a bit before zooming straight to the ground. Ka-ching and ka-boom! 

But in 2014, President Obama ordered a stepped-up military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Later that year, Mr. Obama, who had said that a small number of troops remaining behind in Afghanistan would have no combat role, decided to authorize a more expansive mission for them.

The Air Force was not prepared for this increased demand. Finding pilots was difficult. They typically work long hours in windowless rooms staring at computer monitors and do not get many days off. Many of those who fly armed drones have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder because they have witnessed so many airstrikes. There is also a powerful perception in the Air Force that drone jobs are less prestigious and glamorous than flying more traditional military aircraft, and recruitment has been hard.

OK, so the solution is to give these poor stressed-out drone pilots a break by bringing in constant new recruits for PTSD. This is called instilling some basic human decency into the Kill List. The war-mongers want us to believe that, despite the fact that new hires will be making as much as triple their military pay, it's hard to find recruits. The office ambience is a bit below-par. There's not as much glitter and glamour to long-distance murder as there is in making direct eye contact with your human targets before blasting them to bits. Maybe they can quadruple the pay and tack on an extra week of paid vacation. More likely, they will lower the professional standards. Since our politicians keep harping on a "skills gap" among jobless and underemployed graduates, perhaps our for-profit colleges can add a few Internet courses in drone operation. The market possibilities are endless.

Meanwhile, the Times piece gets even more Orwellian:

Operating drones requires an extensive support network. One pilot and a camera operator typically control a drone, and since a drone is expected to be constantly in the air, each one must have several crews. The analysis of the footage taken in by the drones is even more labor intensive. For every drone, there is a need for up to four dozen analysts who can look at the many hours of footage to assess the targets and other intelligence.

With little alternative, the Air Force initiated a “get-well plan” in January 2015 that included several measures — among them an increase in pay — to try to alleviate the significant “stress on the force” that had developed.

How sweet. The Pentagon is having a Hallmark moment over its Hellfire missiles. Hitmen (and women) for hire in the private sector must be coddled and even sent get-well cards for all that incipient PTSD and eye-strain and aching backs. Forget about the innocent people on the ground getting killed or maimed by Predator and Reaper drones. They rarely get a mention, let alone an apology or compensation. It's not a part of the Drone Playbook. If they were expecting a sympathy card from America, they can think again.

Air Force officials said there are many safeguards in place to train and monitor contractors. But the officials declined to provide many details about the flights, such as where the contractors are deployed and which companies are operating the flights.

The officials also declined to address the role that contractors play in a select group of highly classified drone flights that the Air Force conducts daily for the C.I.A. Air Force pilots, who are essentially on loan to the C.I.A., fly those drones while the agency does its own preflight target planning and post-mission analysis.

We're the American Deep State. Just trust us. If you were expecting transparency over which private corporations are receiving lucrative contracts on your dime for purposes of killing people in your name, you can think again. But, they grudgingly admit,

 Contractors are typically compensated far more than service members, and some current and former senior Air Force officials said their use could actually exacerbate the shortage in military drone pilots because the pay of the private sector might lure them away.

Ya think? So pretty soon, we won't need a regular military at all. It's the capitalism, stupid. And privateers are under no obligation to disclose anything to the public. They only demand that the public pay for everything.

To its credit, the Times does give us a hint on one corporation that is profiting from privatized drone kills, without admitting outright that it is a direct beneficiary of the outsourcing.  In true Orwellian spirit, it is called Resilient Solutions Ltd. Its motto is Your Mission First.

According to its webpage, it was awarded an Air Force contract in May to provide

Advisory and Assistance Services to the Air Force Safety Center (AFSEC), Aviation Safety Division, Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Branch. The RSL Team supports AFSEC's RPA safety programs, involving studies, analysis, evaluation, engineering and technical services to the combatant commanders and major commands (MAJCOMs). The AFSEC Remotely Piloted Aircraft Mishap Prevention program utilizes the RSL team to support Safety Investigation Boards, investigate RPA mishaps, and facilitate the safe integration of RPA operations within the National Airspace Program. Services provided by Resilient Solutions include Safety System Engineering, MQ 1/9 operational expertise, Airspace/Air Traffic Control subject matter experts, RPA Human Factors subject matter experts, RPA maintenance subject matter experts, and Research Analysis.

I could be wrong, but I think that this is Newspeak for "We help you kill people efficiently and responsibly and then help you shove it all under the rug."

Among Resilient Solutions' other listed clients is the New York Times, a factoid which the Paper of Record chose not to disclose.

The New Meaning of Labor Day

Granted, the holiday set aside on the first Monday in September to honor American workers was always the weaker twin of the more radical May Day international celebrations. And it is also ironic, given that May Day itself was inspired by Chicago's Haymarket Massacre, in which agitators for the eight hour day, among other niceties. died for their progressive sins.

Look around at most major news sites today and you will find nary a word about working people and labor rights and the employment picture. That is because the true meaning of Labor Day in the eyes of the corporate media is that it marks the final stretch of the Presidential Horse-race.

Even Bernie Sanders, who walked the picket line with union workers in Iowa last year to mark the festivities, will be toeing the line today for Hillary Clinton. Of course, since his campaign speech will be delivered to the AFL-CIO's confab in New Hampshire, it will no doubt contain a lot of laborious rhetoric.

And let's be fair. Labor Day is the one day of the year that all politicians, even some Republicans, pay lip service to working stiffs. It's the homestretch. They've got a lot of work to do before they buckle down for the real job of rewarding the constituents and the corporations who gave them the most money.

None of today's New York Times op-eds honors the real workers of America, including the activists who achieved so much success in the Fight for Fifteen movement this year.

Paul Krugman instead complained that the media is treating Hillary Clinton unfairly, what with all the smears and innuendo they're directing toward her shady family foundation. Just because she met with some donors at the State Department who gave big bucks to her charity doesn't mean she's crooked. As far as Krugman is concerned, she's wearing the mantle of Saint Mother Teresa. Plus, she is not Trump, who Krugman says threatens to be George W. Bush to her Al Gore, if we malcontents aren't careful and just dutifully shut down the criticism. This poor multimillionaire candidate is getting Gored, for Gore's sake!

And the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating — better than the American Red Cross.

Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Mrs. Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors. So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”

But nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”

Since Krugman is not a journalist, but a pundit, he is seemingly under no obligation to write fact-based columns. He is under no obligation to conduct actual research into the workings and money flows of the Clinton Foundation. Yet,

 So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.

I couldn't resist. Here is my much-maligned published comment:

 You know who's really getting gored? The working class.

I guess the "conscience of a liberal" can't address the plight of the precariously employed, the poorly paid, and the chronically jobless on this Labor Day. The fortunes of an embattled politician are at stake!

And talk about innuendo. It seems like only yesterday that the pundit who now lectures the media on its ethics was smearing Bernie Sanders and his supporters as deluded, quixotic naifs who were selfishly demanding such impossible dreams as universal health care and a tuition-free public higher education.

Thanks to progressives, Clinton was forced to take a position on the minimum wage and against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the corporate war on workers which now appears moribund.

Yes, HRC is getting smeared on ridiculous things, like the "shadow" cast over her candidacy by Anthony Weiner. The mainstream press is not only inept, it appears mightily bored.

But questions about her foundation are legitimate. Yes, it does good around the world. Apologists like to point out there's never been evidence of pay-to-play. But as New York congressional candidate Zephyr Teachout, who literally wrote the book on "Corruption in America," explains, a quid pro quo isn't necessary. Wealthy donors and potentates pay for political access, which usually pays handsome dividends over time.

 All the Clintons should divest themselves. And then we must get the obscene money out of politics by overturning Citizens United.

Now, to be fair, not all the members of the ruling establishment have ignored the true meaning of Labor Day. President Obama himself used it as the topic of his weekly address, recorded before he was so ignobly forced to deplane in China from the cloaca of Air Force One, minus the red carpet.

Of course, he only talked about American workers, not the suicide risks in China who make the Apple products that enrich Steve Jobs's widow, who in turn hosted a $200,000-a-person fundraiser for Hillary Clinton to ensure that those Apple jobs will never come to our shores and pay workers anything close to a living wage.

Obama actually started out his chat quite liberally: 

For generations, every time the economy changed, hardworking Americans marched and organized and joined unions to demand not simply a bigger paycheck for themselves, but better conditions and more security for the folks working next to them, too.  Their efforts are why we can enjoy things like the 40-hour workweek, overtime pay, and a minimum wage.  Their efforts are why we can depend on health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, and retirement plans. 
All of that progress is stamped with the union label.  All of that progress was fueled with a simple belief:  that our economy works better when it works for everybody.

I think it's his folksy usage of the word "folks" that should warn us where he's going with all this historical happy-talk. He is taking us straight to Brave Neoliberal Land for the newer, improved meaning of Labor Day:

That’s the spirit that’s made the progress of these past seven and a half years possible.  We’ve rescued our economy from another depression, cut our unemployment rate in half, and unleashed the longest string total job growth on record.  And we’ve focused on making sure that the gains of a growing economy don’t just flow to a few at the top, but to everybody. 

Yes, people. The radical labor rights movement fought to have Wall Street bankers bailed out, for General Motors to be rescued in exchange for new workers getting hired at lower wages in a divide-and-conquer two-tiered assembly line setup, and for the wages all across the land to decline even as the wealth gap between rich and poor has grown to historic levels in the Age of Obama. He says he focused on the gains of the economy not all flowing to the top. He's right. As a matter of fact, only 91% of the gains since the 2008 crash have flowed to the top One Percent. Everybody else got the crumbs.  Hey, at least most people aren't actually starving. If you still have a refrigerator and a flat screen, how can you possibly call yourself poor?

It’s why we took action to help millions of workers finally collect the overtime pay they’ve earned.  It’s why I issued a call to raise the minimum wage, and when Congress ignored that call, 18 states and the District of Columbia, plus another 51 cities and counties went ahead and gave their workers a raise.  It’s why the very first bill I signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; why we gave paid sick days to federal contractors; why we’ve fought for worker safety and the right to organize. 
And we’ve made good progress.  For a few years after the recession, the top one percent did capture almost all income gains.  But that share has been cut by almost half.  Last year, income for everybody else grew at the fastest pace since the 1990s.  And another 20 million Americans know the financial security of health insurance.

To be fair, Obama did finally extend overtime protections to millions of workers this year. But only after severe pressure and shaming from progressive activists. You see, it's an election year, and the Democrats have to do a few nice things to prove they care and deserve our votes. And this is precisely why the president casually squeezes the inconvenient truth about income disparity in this particular paragraph, rather than in the previous one. It's best practices to always save the bad news until after you've told the proles your little bit of good news. And did you notice how quickly he glossed over Obamacare? It is not doing too well. Plus, any financial security in the mix certainly does not belong to the health care "consumer." It belongs to insurance company executives and investors getting fabulously rich off mandated premiums and government welfare.

Obama can get away with his glossing over actual facts, because as William Dornhoff points out, most people have no idea of how extreme the wealth disparity truly is. We tend to give the benefit of the doubt to very rich people, whom we have been taught got that way by virtue of hard labor and "risk-taking." It may be shocking, but the lowest two quintiles of the American population possess only .03 percent of total United States wealth. 

Obama smoothly sails on nonetheless:

I’ll be the first to say we’ve got more work to do in the years ahead.  Now, I know we’re in the heat of a more raucous political season than usual.  But we can’t get so distracted by the latest bluster that we lose sight of the policies that will actually help working families get ahead.  Because the truth is, that’s what’s caused some of the frustration that’s roiling our politics right now – too many working folks still feel left behind by an economy that’s constantly changing.

Now he is in full neoliberal propaganda mode. The common refrain in a society where capitalism has replaced democracy is "we've got more work to do in the years ahead." In other words, don't count on your lives improving while you're still alive. And meanwhile, elect Hillary Clinton. She has policies on a website, and all Donald Trump has is bluster. But Obama feels your pain if you still "feel" left behind by an economy that is constantly changing, all by itself, because there is no alternative and you can't change the weather. Greed and global plunder are like Hurricane Hermine in that regard. Very mean. So batten down the hatches, and hope for the best against those "economic headwinds."

The slickness continues:

 So as a country, we’ve got some choices to make.  Do we want to be a country where the typical woman working full-time earns 79 cents for every dollar a man makes – or one where they earn equal pay for equal work?  Do we want a future where inequality rises as union membership keeps falling – or one where wages are rising for everybody and workers have a say in their prospects?  Are we a people who just talk about family values while remaining the only developed nation that doesn’t offer its workers paid maternity leave – or are we a people who actually value families, and make paid family leave an economic priority for working parents?

By merely asking rhetorical questions, Obama means to imply that he actually cares about the answers. He tries to separate himself from the very same neoliberal policies which himself he has both kept in place and crafted anew. By asking if we want paid maternity leave, he pre-empts the demand for living wages, universal health care, tuition-free and debt-free higher public education, a government sponsored jobs program, and affordable housing. Paid family leave is the least of a working parent's worries. Not having enough money in the bank for a car repair and not having enough food on the table are more pressing concerns. But Obama will not go there.

These are the kinds of choices in front of us.  And if we’re going to restore the sense that hard work is rewarded with a fair shot to get ahead, we’re going to have to follow the lead of all those who came before us.  That means standing up not just for ourselves, but for the father clocking into the plant, the sales clerk working long and unpredictable hours, or the mother riding the bus to work across town, even on Labor Day – folks who work as hard as we do.  And it means exercising our rights to speak up in the workplace, to join a union, and above all, to vote.

That was the big tell. Obama is not addressing working stiffs in this speech. He is addressing well-to-do liberals who should be concerned about working stiffs. Those folks work just as hard as "we" do - we managers, doctors, lawyers, lobbyists, real estate executives and the like. "We" must care about The Help riding on the bus to clean our homes as hard as "we" clean up in billable hours and writing smarmy op-eds for the mainstream media.

And don't ever forget: in Neoliberal World, the paramount duty of the citizen is not to join the picket line or to occupy a public space in protest of racism and class inequality, but to vote for the person who can best serve the interests of the wealthy. If working folks are very smart and very lucky, Hillary Clinton will beat Donald Trump, and a few meager drops of her golden beneficence might just even reach the lower levels. Someday. Maybe. If we vote our little hearts out.

Abject surrender to these artificially limited and mandated choices can be so seductive, but the only thing we really have to fear is fear-mongering platitudes.

We've got a lot of work to do.

The Trump World We Live In

The New York Times came in for some much-deserved criticism this week over its coverage of the latest episode in the tawdry life of Anthony Weiner. But far from being chastened, the paper is staunchly defending its own tawdry descent into National Enquirer territory.

 I am certainly no fan of Hillary Clinton, but here's the part of the controversial article that made me cringe:

Now, Mr. Weiner’s tawdry activities may have claimed his marriage — Ms. Abedin told him that she wanted to separate — and have cast another shadow on the adviser and confidante who has been by Mrs. Clinton’s side for the past two decades. Ms. Abedin was already a major figure this summer in controversies over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified information as secretary of state and over ties between the Clinton family foundation and Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.

Mr. Weiner’s extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clintons’ own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clinton’s much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Ms. Abedin’s choice to separate from her husband evokes the debates that erupted over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the Lewinsky affair, a scandal her campaign wants left in the past.

 When contacted for comment by the Times public editor, one of the writers (Amy Chozick) of the piece said:“I completely understand why people have a reaction to a story like this, and question what it has to do with Clinton or politics, or don’t understand why it should. But that’s not the world we live in.”

Readers had reacted so negatively to her article because not only did the story insinuate that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are themselves partially culpable for the actions of this troubled, creepy little man, it received pride of place on the top of the front page. It was sexist guilt-by-association with a vengeance.

 Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy then had to add gasoline to the fire by seeking out Donald Trump for his own expert comments. Needless to say, Trump added his own high octane to the gasoline by stating that Clinton's very association with Weiner is a matter of grave national security.

As is its wont, the Times is now doubling down and staunchly defending itself against criticism of its tabloid-style innuendo-rich coverage. Public Editor Liz Spayd herself added gasoline to the fire on Thursday by characterizing the paper's treatment of Weiner's compulsive sexting habit - which now even extends into the realm of child endangerment - as a "hot story."

She writes:

It seems to me this story falls into a realm of news coverage that invariably has the media tripping over itself. There’s a sex scandal, politics and questions about how much one has to do with the other. And contrary to public suspicion, mainstream newsrooms of the type I’ve worked in don’t particularly enjoy these kinds of stories. It’s easy to get ensnared in them and hard to get them right.

I don’t think The Times in this case was wildly off the mark. But it was not precise enough in what it was and wasn’t trying to say. Unfortunately, too many unforced errors can sometimes cost you the game.

Spayd as much as admits that journalism is a sport, with newsroom winners and losers and unforced errors and scorecards. Pretty flippant.

And since I just couldn't get over Amy Chozicks's own flippant retort - that disgusted readers should simply get used to it - I submitted my own two cents:

“I completely understand why people have a reaction to a story like this, and question what it has to do with Clinton or politics, or don’t understand why it should,” she (Amy Chozick) said. “But that’s not the world we live in.”

Ms. Chozick has just obliquely admitted that the mainstream media lives in a world all its own. It's a cocooned, careerist world dominated by horse race politics, clickbait, getting on the Most Popular and Trending lists, and beating the competition on the latest sleaze. It has little to nothing to do with journalism in the public interest.

Forgive me if I don't care to dwell in the world "we" live in, Ms. Chozick.

Hopefully the Times will get back to real reporting on the issues, once this hell of an election season is over. But I'm not counting on it. Coverage of scandals and palace intrigues and petty backbiting and ego-stroking among the elites of the incestuous political-media complex seems to be what passes for journalism these days.

 Coverage of existential issues affecting everyday people apparently just doesn't sell papers or attract enough ad revenue.

Much to my surprise, Amy Chozick responded to me - with a little more gasoline. It's not the media world, folks. It's the "political landscape". (And she seems to assume that since I was critical of her reportage, it naturally follows that I am a biased Clinton supporter) --

 Hi Karen, My comment wasn't about the world "we" (the media) live in, but about the political landscape that we cover. While Clinton supporters would like this to not be an issue, Donald Trump immediately made it one, and thus we have to cover it as such.

I'd also direct you to the numerous stories I've written about Clinton's policy plans, from taxes to criminal justice reform. Those far outweigh anything we've written about Anthony Weiner.

Thanks for writing.
Best,

 Amy

My response:

 Hi Amy,

Thanks for responding and clarifying your statement.

Yes, I have read and admired your many informative pieces on policy. Unfortunately, these are rarely placed above the fold where they belong (that valuable real estate seems to be Donald Trump's exclusive squatting domain lately.)

I look forward to reading your or another reporter's analysis of the very detailed mental health plan which Hillary Clinton unveiled just the other day. If there's already been coverage of it in the Times, and I missed it in trying to navigate the Trump landscape, I do apologize.

Cheers,

Karen

I loved "Tinmanic's" response to Amy:

"While Clinton supporters would like this to not be an issue, Donald Trump immediately made it one, and thus we have to cover it as such."

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Ms. Chozick. I'm flabbergasted at this statement.

Trump said it was an issue, and therefore it's an issue?

Problem number one: if the issue was because of Trump, why is Trump hardly mentioned in the article?

Problem number two: since when did New York Times reporters become mere stenographers for the Trump campaign?

You are letting yourselves be manipulated.

Having worked as a newspaper reporter myself in a previous life, I can only imagine the pressure that Amy Chozick must be under, what with Hillary Clinton being her sole defined beat for the last several years. Boredom must be her constant companion. And Hillary is certainly not known for being "accessible" and for treating the press graciously.

Amy Chozick's rationalizations remind me of the time I was assigned by my male editor to confront the wife of a U.S. Congressman about revelations that he had fathered a child with one of his staffers. (My boss opined that it's always more gently effective for a woman reporter to rub a scorned woman's nose in it.) I telephoned, and immediately informed the wife that I was making the call under duress. When she said she didn't want to air her family's dirty laundry in public, I totally agreed with her, murmured apologies, and quickly ended the call. My editor, who'd been hovering nearby, was furious with me at having wasted such a golden journalistic opportunity and for not being sufficiently cutthroat.

 That was the business I had chosen to be in, but I always exercised my option not to obey all the rules of the game. (I refused, for example, to rush to the scenes of bridge-jumpers and landscapes of human beings mangled up in highway accidents). Such sporadic recalcitrance didn't make me many friends in all-male management. But, as has happened so often in the news biz over the past several decades, the paper was sold and folded before I actually got the chance to be fired.

It's the capitalistic, cutthroat world of creative destruction that we live in.