Media Cannibals and Zombie Messages

So, the Commerce Secretary got into a series of unfortunate car accidents over the weekend, seemingly stemming from medical issues. Nobody was seriously hurt, thank goodness.

But judging from the media coverage, the event -- hardly a scandal of epic proportions -- is hurting the president's "messaging". It is distracting from the "narrative".  It is making his Friday press conference gaffe about the wonderful private sector loom even larger in the public consciousness. 

John Bryson, the victim, has been lost in the shuffle of politics. He was apparently well enough to go back to work Monday morning, but by Monday night he was suddenly on an "indefinite" medical leave of absence.

The Republicans, of course, had pounced on the story immediately, only to quickly retract suppositions that Bryson was drunk (breathalyzer was negative.)  Then the press corps pounced, wondering if he had been properly vetted before being appointed, if a previous fainting incident had been the subject of a nefarious cover-up, if a seizure disorder might have impeded the secretary's task of conducting the nation's commerce. From yesterday's White House press briefing:

Q Thank you. Does Jack Lew consider the Secretary Bryson’s incident a serious one -- two car accidents? And any questions about his health?

MR. CARNEY: I think I just answered this. (he had --this was the second question about Bryson.) I don’t have a specific response to give you from Jack Lew. I think our response is what I said in general, which is concern about the incident, learning more about the incident, obviously the health-related aspect of this. But I don’t have any specifics for you and I would refer you to the Commerce Department.

Q Is health taken into consideration when the President vets somebody for a Cabinet position?

MR. CARNEY: I don’t have any specifics for you on those procedures. The President obviously nominated Secretary Bryson because he believed he was capable of serving as Commerce Secretary, and he has served effectively as Commerce Secretary since he was confirmed by the United States Senate.

Q Apparently he had some kind of episode when attending a board meeting a couple of years ago.

MR. CARNEY: I have no information on that and don’t know even if it’s true.

Q Is that the kind of thing a Secretary should keep in touch with the White House on? Do you know --

MR. CARNEY: Again, you just told me something that is speculation, and now you’re asking me if it’s something he should have made people aware of. I don’t know anything about that incident, and I do not know whether or not it’s accurate.

Q Should Secretary Bryson’s office have gotten in touch with the White House earlier than last evening?

MR. CARNEY: Well, we’re in discussions with the Commerce Department about this. Again, it was a unique -- let me just step back and say, whenever a senior official is involved in an incident of this nature or any kind of incident like it, it’s obviously important that the White House find out about it. This circumstance was pretty unique in that Secretary Bryson was alone, was not with a security detail, was on private time, which is common for certain members of the Cabinet, and it resulted in him being -- both having a seizure and ending up in the hospital. So, for that reason, you have to recognize this as somewhat unique. But in general, certainly it’s important that the White House be informed as soon as possible.

And there was this third hard-hitting exchange on Hit'nRunGate, in what passes for modern adversarial journalism:

Q Jay, on Secretary Bryson, what was the timing of the seizure in relation to the accident?

MR. CARNEY: I would refer you, as I said in the past, to the Department of Commerce for more details.

Q I've been asking them for hours.

MR. CARNEY: I just don't have those details for you. So I think I would refer you to the Commerce Department.

Q Can you explain why there seems to be a parsing of -- it just seems the Commerce Department is saying he was involved in accidents and he had a seizure, but there's really nothing connecting the dots and it's really an important point.

MR. CARNEY: Well, again, as I pointed out, there was -- the Commerce Secretary was alone; he had a seizure; he was involved in an accident. I would refer you to the Commerce Department for more details. Those circumstances I think speak to some of the difficulty in getting details. But beyond that, I just don't know and I would refer you to the Department of Commerce.

Q Does it seem like it's causal, though, the seizure and the accidents?

MR. CARNEY: Again, I'm certainly not a doctor. I certainly didn't --

Q But you've seen --

MR. CARNEY: I was not a presiding doctor on this case, so I would refer you to the Department of Commerce.

Q He was involved in several accidents. You said, "an accident" just now.

MR. CARNEY: Okay, I read the reports, April. He was involved in several accidents.

Q I mean, for the record --

MR. CARNEY: Thank you for the correction. I think I acknowledged what you all have read, is that there were several accidents as part of this incident.

Q And can you speak to how the White House came to be alerted?

MR. CARNEY: The White House was informed yesterday evening.

Q By?

MR. CARNEY: By the Commerce Department. I don't have an individual for you. And the President was informed this morning.

Q Jay, one more on that. Can you say whether the Secretary is now on medical leave or if you expect --

MR. CARNEY: Can I refer you to the Commerce Department? They would have the best information on that.

Q It's the kind of thing the President would probably know about, so that's why I'm asking.

MR. CARNEY: I would refer you to the Department of Commerce.

It has come to this. The journalistic class has nothing better to do than to wallow in its own manufactured drama, taking an obscure cabinet secretary's obscure traffic mishap and making it into a monumental issue. It ranks right up there with the unemployment crisis, the Euro crisis, the impending Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare and LeakGate. From The Hill:

A hit-and-run accident involving Commerce Secretary John Bryson threw the White House off message Monday just as President Obama sought to regain his footing after a series of political missteps.

How about the accidents throwing Bryson himself for a loop? How about disclosing how the press rabble itself threw the White House off-message? How about that old Marshall McLuhan adage -- the medium is the message?

And Politico, of course, was also just being its own political self with the headline: "John Bryson's Leave of Absence Adds to Obama's Bad News."

It was an uncomfortable way to start the week, making it impossible for the White House to reset its economic message after Obama had to walk back his “the private sector is doing fine” comment from Friday. That self-inflicted wound came in a news conference meant to divert from a series of bad news cycles: the massive Democratic loss in the Wisconsin recall, Bill Clinton’s off-message adventures, national security leaks, the dismal May jobs report and his own fundraising numbers for the month showing him millions of dollars behind Mitt Romney.

Gloria Allred, celebrity attorney to the stars of media victimhood, nailed it the other day when she announced what is really important: "Cannibalism is a serious issue and is very dangerous to the health and the well-being of the cannibal and the victim.”

She was speaking, of course about that drug-crazed face-eater in Florida. But she might as well have been talking about the state of national politics in general and the Washington press corps in particular. They are not only poisoning the public discourse with their meaningless drivel, they are eating democracy alive by not serving the public interest. They are endangering our health with their stenographic reporting and vacuous questions. They are a menace to our well-being. They truly are, in the words of Allred, "the scourge of our time."

I am no fan of the Obama Administration, but press secretary Jay Carney had it absolutely right when he admonished the ravening White House press corps to "do your jobs and report context."

Too bad he also didn't suggest that they pivot to the illegality of those targeted drone assassinations by presidential decree, rather than mindlessly concentrating about who leaked what. Here's his exchange with Norah O'Donnell of CBS about LeakGate:

Q Senator McCain over the weekend accused the Obama administration of intentionally leaking information to enhance Obama’s image as a tough guy for reelection. Do you have a response to that?

MR. CARNEY: Well, my response is the same as it was last week, which is that is wrong and absurd. The President addressed this himself from this podium on Friday. He takes very seriously the need to protect classified and sensitive information, and that has been his posture since he took office.

Q How can you say unequivocally that it’s wrong and absurd? Have you done an internal investigation?

MR. CARNEY: I can tell you that this administration -- this White House, under the guidance of the President, takes very seriously the need to protect classified and sensitive information, the need to do so for our national security interests to protect our counterterrorism operations and other operations that are undertaken by our forces and our government.



Stop the Scourge of Absurd Questioning by Journalists!



Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/08/3647003/commentary-gloria-allreds-valiant.html#storylink=cpy

Phony Outrage

Let's see.... it's been more than a week since the New York Times first broke the story that President Obama has a secret list containing the names of "militants" and "terrorists" being targeted for assassination. Among other things, we learned that the president himself is the ultimate decider of who lives and who dies. Then, close upon its heels came another scoop, describing how Obama took over a secret cyber-war against Iran begun by George W. Bush.The Stuxnet virus, long suspected to be a joint American-Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, turns out to have been another program with hands-on direction from the president himself. 

Did the White House immediately issue statements denying the veracity of the information contained in these stories, and vowing to launch immediate investigations into who divulged state secrets to Times reporters? It did not. It neither denied, nor reacted in any way, other than a few brusque "no comments" due to the secretive, sensitive nature of the information that conveniently, somehow leaked out of the deepest recesses of the Situation Room.

For its part, too, Congress was initially and predictably silent. After all, the drone strikes are an open secret. Congress appropriates the money for them.Thousands have died from American bombs in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, many of them innocent men, women and children. The only outrage had been coming from the lonely outposts of the civil libertarian blogosphere and independent journalism. Polls have shown that most "liberals" are just fine with our President unilaterally taking it upon himself to kill Muslims, to keep us all "safe."

But when the Paper of Record sat up and took notice and spilled the beans on the Kill List and Stuxnetgate, Congress also finally sat up and took notice, howling about how that, and the drone program revelations are endangering national security. Depending on their political party, they alternately blamed the newspaper itself for publishing the articles, and accused the White House of being the source of the leaks. Democrat Dianne Feinstein is upset that such information being made public will make us less safe. Republican John McCain is livid that the information appears to have been leaked for pure political gain, to boost the president's re-election prospects. None of the power elites is complaining about the illegality of the programs, executive overreach, or the loss of innocent human life. Just the leaks, and nothing but the leaks.

And today, President Obama himself sat up and took notice. Without actually confirming that he is in fact, Lord High Executioner, he vociferously denied that his White House has been the source for the Times stories. (this, despite the fact that reporters wrote that their sources were a hefty three dozen White House insiders!) Quotes from his press con this morning:

"The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive. It's wrong.... People I think need to have a better sense of how I approach this office and how the people around me approach this office."

"When this information or these reports -- whether true or false -- surface, on front page newspapers, that makes the job of folks on the front lines tougher, and it makes my job tougher," he said. "Which is why, since I've been office, my attitude has been zero tolerance for these kinds of leaks and speculation."

"We're dealing with issue that can touch on the safety and security of American people, our families or our American security personal, or our allies, and so we don't play with that," he went on to say. "It is a source of consistent frustration -- not just for my administration, but for previous administration -- when this stuff happens, and we will continue to let everybody know in government, or after they leave government, that they have certain obligations that they should carry out."

Notice that while Obama decried the leaks themselves, he did not deny their veracity or that these were horrendous allegations in and of themselves .... only that they didn't come from him. He even claimed that the Times reporters have now said they didn't come from the White House. Actually, the reporters have said no such thing, at least publicly.

Scott Shane, co-author of the "Kill List" story, did write a blogpost this week blaming readers for misinterpreting the article. For example, he now denies ever having said that David Axelrod was present during "Terror Tuesday" meetings, even though his article did explicitly state that Axelrod was a silent observer. He also tried to run from his own lead, which had implied that the president mulled killing a 17-year-old girl. And then Shane blamed thousands of "left-wing" bloggers for starting rumors based on his reporting, strangely seizing upon the libertarian Prison Planet as an example of left wing rumor-mongering.

I have a feeling that Scott Shane, for all his hagiographic reportage on the Assassinator in Chief, got a bit of blowback from the White House after the publication did not have the desired effect. The majority of reader-commenters, far from cheering for the killing president, expressed disgust and shock. Shane subsequently made a lame attempt at some stenographic damage control, particularly on the Axelrod connection (as a campaign operative, he is not legally allowed to participate in White House policy meetings) and doing his patriotic duty to slime the left wing blogosphere that has had the nerve to be critical of the drone murders. Here's what I replied to Shane*:

With regard to David Axelrod's claim that he was never present at Terror Tuesday meetings, please allow me to quote the salient paragraph from your original article:

"David Axelrod, the president’s closest political adviser, began showing up at the 'Terror Tuesday' meetings, his unspeaking presence a visible reminder of what everyone ne understood: a successful attack would overwhelm the president’s other aspirations and achievements." Can you understand why your readers did not discern the difference between the casual Terror Tuesday meetings in which Axelrod merely hung out as a silent observer, and the real nitty-gritty meetings in which other people ultimately decided who was to live and who was to die? I was among those who totally missed the nuance -- so our bad, huh?

You are a master of innuendo. In this blog post, for instance, you gripe about the thousands of posters "from the left" who went nuts with their inaccuracies. You then use as an example the conspiracy site "Prison Planet" -- thus subtly implying that leftist blogs are kind of nuts. Prison Planet, incidentally, is run by a self-professed libertarian -- not a leftist by any stretch of the imagination.

For some real criticism from the left, I suggest reading Glenn Greenwald.

It seems to me that some kind of damage control is underway here. The White House thought revealing its Kill List would make the administration seem heroic. Instead, they are getting some blowback from shocked citizens. Good.

Meanwhile, The Times finds itself in the business of having to push back against the leak accusations, protesting that they were in no way spoon-fed the information by the White House. The articles in question were the results of hard digging over long periods of time by the reporters, insists Managing Editor Dean Bacquet.

It may be for all the wrong reasons, but the assassination program and accompanying evisceration of civil rights (both foreign and domestic) by this president is finally getting some attention from the mainstream media. For a good overview on the hypocrisy of the Administration's paranoid prosecution of low-level whistleblowers, read this piece by Josh Gerstein. (and of course, Glenn Greenwalds's continuing series exposing the hypocrisy and crime sprees.)

And in a literary approach to both the Times reportage and the Obama kill list itself, Francine Prose has written a stunning critique in the The New York Review of Books. Before Shane used his innuendo skills to semi-retract his own article, he used them, writes Prose, to pen a chilling indictment of Obama under the guise of flattery. She aptly compares the president's chief anti-terrorism advisor John Brennan to Rasputin and Obama himself to Tony Soprano. It's a short read, so don't miss it.

* I have taken to writing just a few of my Times comments under my maiden name initials in a craven effort to maintain my own sanity -- due to some recent personal attacks from the "veal pen" commentariat. I have been told, essentially, to shut up if I can't say anything nice about Our Leader. There is a band of people which literally "stalks" me on Times comments threads. It's the typical crap that Obama critics from the left have been subject to lately, and I have to say, it is getting nasty out there. One person even attacked me through my place of residence, describing my little hometown as being full of tattoo parlors and pitbulls. These are so-called liberals. The times they are indeed a changin'.

The only thing scarier than an Orwellian government are the Orwellian authoritarian citizens enabling it.

The Unmitigated Gall of the Obama Campaign

You've all heard by now that Scott Walker survived his recall election, thanks in part to the scads of money poured into his war chest from out of state.  You've no doubt also heard that he outspent his challenger nearly eight to one, and that Obama avoided Wisconsin like the plague, even though he was in the neighborhood (Minnesota and Illinois) recently. This, despite his famous promise  during his first campaign that he'd be putting on his comfortable shoes to help the unions. And a lot of people are royally miffed that the most he could do was tweet one teeny tweet on Election Eve, saying good luck to the public unions and the Democrats.  He did not contribute a penny of his own campaign millions to the effort, although to be fair he finally allowed campaign volunteers to travel to Wisconsin to get out the vote. In January 2011, when throngs of protesters first converged on the capital, the White House ordered Organizing for America (now Obama for America) out of Madison when it learned volunteers were aiding the demonstrators.

It was during that time that Obama, fresh off the midterm defeats, was on his austerity kick. He was feverishly accomodating Republicans in their phony deficit hawk rampage and made the "difficult choice" to abandon the unions when the GOP accused him of meddling in Wisconsin.

The Obama machine, while claiming the Scott Walker win is no big deal in the grand scheme of things, is nevertheless wasting no time trying to cash in on it. I just checked my spam folder -- here's what arrived from campaign honcho Jim Messina:

Karen --

What just happened in Wisconsin wasn't an accident.

Republican Governor Scott Walker and his allies outspent the Democratic challenger nearly EIGHT to ONE -- and one of the most unpopular governors in the country managed to hold on.

This result is direct confirmation that all the outside money that's poured into elections this cycle can and will change their outcome. And it's exactly what could happen on the national stage unless we can close the gap between special interests and ordinary people.

The hell with helping the locals in the backwaters, though. It's Barry and the national race that counts. And ordinary people? Gimme a break! He just spent Monday night canoodling with hedge fund managers in New York City before flying out to California today to rake in more millions from some real special ordinary rich people.

In the case of Wisconsin, a resurgence of a potential national labor movement became subsumed by electoral politics and party machines -- themselves even further corrupted by the addition of limitless, often anonymous, corporate money. Grassroots got choked out by Koch Brothers astroturf. Now the Obama campaign swoops in for its share of the spoils.

 Walker was challenged because he's spent the last year and a half promoting special interests and Republican ideologues while taking away a seat at the table for middle-class families. But when his job was on the line, those same interest groups repaid the favors -- and were willing to spend nearly EIGHT times as much money as the Democratic candidate and his allies raised.

This is the playbook Mitt Romney used in primary after primary against Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

His ad buys were overwhelmingly negative, and he and his backers poured money into whatever state was next until they got the result they wanted.

Now, imagine this same scenario playing out again in Wisconsin in November, and in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, and the rest of the battleground states.

Yeah, my heart is going pitter-patter with trepidation. Boo-hoo for Wisconsin, but that doesn't matter. Because it is Obama who matters. Only Obama. Notice how carefully Messina avoids any mention of the word "unions" -- which was what the recall attempt was really all about. According to the New York Times, his campaign is heartened by exit polls showing that not a few Walker supporters also happen to be Obama supporters. Hmmm....

 The other side has the money. They know they can buy the election if they spend it. And they are being told every day by Mitt Romney that he will do exactly what they want him to. 

We can stop them.

Please donate $15 or more to support President Obama and make sure people, not special interests, decide this election. (there follows a link to BarackObama/Wisc. so they can keep their Wisconsin money separate from their regular money.)

This is what the Obama machine does. It passive-aggressively sets lesser Democrats and a few liberal pet causes up for defeat, then uses those defeats to raise money, money, money for itself. It happened a few days ago when Congress killed that phony equal pay bill -- a bill the Democrats had punted on back in 2009 when they had more than enough votes to pass it. This law, incidentally, would not have forced employers to pay women what they are worth at all. It merely would have made it less cumbersome for females to sue for discrimination. It theoretically would have protected them from being fired for complaining about their crappy pay. It also put the onus on employers to prove all their workers were paid equitably, thus further setting it up for defeat. Of course, the bosses who do the firing could always claim dismissal for cause. This was a rather weak bill to begin with. No real teeth, and not enough labor cops on the beat to enforce it.

The White House had only started drumming up public attention for it a few days before the actual vote, with those cheesy e-cards I posted about the other day.
And the appeals for more War Against Women money by Democrats began arriving like clockwork, almost the minute the bill was put out of its misery.

People who keep track of such things estimate that Obama now spends fully one third of all his working hours canoodling with rich people at serial fund-raisers. According to Amie Parnes of The Hill,

Obama has spent the bulk of his time in California on fundraising junkets — including a much-hyped fundraiser with A-lister George Clooney, which pulled in $15 million. The California News Service estimated recently that 80 percent of his trips have included at least one fundraiser.

And when Obama visits the state on Wednesday and Thursday, with two stops in San Francisco and three stops in Los Angeles, he’ll reap the financial benefits of his endorsement of same-sex marriage, observers say.

Ted Johnson, who writes the popular Wilshire and Washington blog for Variety, points to one example as proof: Ticket demand for an LGBT gala Wednesday night in Los Angeles spiked after Obama’s gay-marriage declaration, and a separate dinner — hosted by “Glee” co-creator Ryan Murphy — was added to the schedule.

“The campaign is definitely seeing the demand in California this year,” Johnson said. “Just the fact that he was here three weeks ago and now he’s back is proof of that.”

Gimme, 'Cause You're Special

Leaky Ship of State

A White House that has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined is itself going to be the subject of a leak investigation -- or so some Congressional chest-thumpers are threatening. Could Barry be joining Bradley Manning in Fort Leavenworth for spilling the beans to The New York Times over his cyberwar with Iran? Of course not. But it would make a great movie. 

We couldn't get a special prosecutor to investigate Wall Street and haul in a few banksters, but such senatorial heavy-hitters as Dianne Feinstein and John McCain are now demanding one for "Stuxnetgate" and also for recent revelations that the President is illegally killing  people with drones. This has nothing to do with human rights or anything, mind you. The congress critters are simply worried that some of those unstable countries might huffily turn around and get revenge on us! Feinstein and her ilk have always been just fine with the evisceration of the Constitution and shadow wars and general malfeasance. They are simply upset that the American public is finally finding out about their dirty little secrets, is all.

 Feinstein finds this recent avalanche of revelations "quite disconcerting and detrimental to our country." John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee considers them "dangerous and damaging." Holy indignant alliteration! Now that news of drones and viruses are splashed all over American newspapers and cable channels, the Pakistanis and Yemenis are going to find out about them. They heretofore had no idea where all those bombs and dead bodies were coming from.

Dianne Feinstein Braces for Disconcerting Avalanche

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who recently declared the whole world a battlefield in the War on Terror, remarked that while he sleeps better knowing we are killing people, he doesn't need to read a "blow-by-blow account of how it's being done." Such things are better left to fevered sadistic imaginations like his, I reckon.

As Glenn Greenwald has so aptly been noticing lately, the recent Times scoops have to be the direct results of cooperation from the Obama Administration. Otherwise, the Obama Administration would already be indicting people for leaks. That they are silent is proof positive that they want us to know about this stuff, because it prevents (they think) the Republicans from painting the president as soft on defense. It's the re-election, stupid! From The Hill:

The FBI opened its own probe Tuesday into who disclosed information on the Iranian attack, The Wall Street Journal reported. On Capitol Hill, the Senate Armed Service Committee promised hearings, while two Republican senators called for a special counsel investigation.

Several Democrats noted with alarm that the Iranian cyber leak is just the latest in a series of media reports that disclosed classified information about U.S. anti-terrorism activity.

(snip)

 The only conceivable motive for such damaging and compromising leaks of classified information is that it makes the president look good,” said McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. “They are merely gratuitous and utterly self-serving.”

McCain said Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has agreed to hold congressional hearings on the leaks.

But there's no need to fear. Now that Iran has suddenly discovered in The New York Times that the Stuxnet virus was manufactured by the USA and Israel and is therefore plotting its own revenge attack, Barry and his Terror Tuesday Squad held a Situation Room drill yesterday to practice how to think and react to such a retaliatory affront. As the official White House statement hilariously puts it, "As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, we need Congress to pass legislation to secure the nation from the growing danger of cyber threats, while safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens."

 

What's Wrong With These Pictures?

The cartoon lady in the top picture is black, unfairly paid.... and grinning her face off anyway.

The cartoon lady on the bottom is white, unfairly paid.... and somewhat upset.


From obviously the same White House artiste who brought us the cheesy "Life of Julia" series comes a brand new series of e-cards supposedly touting the Fair Pay Act. Rather than storming around the country demanding a national minimum wage as he did during his last campaign, Our Leader just wants all the people to send these cartoons to our friends and neighbors, in case they didn't know working women exist in a living hell and are either ecstatically happy about it or mildly chagrined, as the case (or race) may be.

What we really need is a conversation about the stagnating wages of both sexes, not to mention the fact that in not one of the 50 states does a minimum wage job pay a month's rent. Not one. Or how about the fact that unions are being destroyed at a dizzying clip, or that those touted "re-shored" manufacturing jobs at places like tax-evading, profit-bloated G.E. pay only half of what they did just a few years ago? But I digress.

In one of the e-cards, another cheerful white woman is shown in the express lane of the grocery store. We are told, "It's true, in more than 50% of American households, women's salaries help pay the bills, buy the groceries and provide for their families."


The implicit message, of course, is that Cheerful White Woman has a husband who also works, since she only "helps" to pay the bills. If she were the sole breadwinner, she would not be smiling in the supermarket. You can trust me on that.


I have to say, if the Romney campaign put out cartoon crap like this, buying into the mythology of the happy slave woman, there would be hell to pay, cries of racism. But since a black president's staff is putting out the distasteful propaganda, don't expect Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell to gin up any manufactured outrage. They'll save the outrage for when the Romney campaign makes fun of the cartoons. Or when Republicans block the bill in Congress in another War on Women skirmish. But it will be win-win for the Democrats anyway -- they'll have another wedge issue to fund-raise off.


This latest White House propaganda campaign is obviously geared toward solidly middle-class, independent, Ann Romney-leaning women voters who don't have to worry about impending eviction or having enough money in a single crappy checking account to feed their kids, and who don't want to worry about the poor women who have no choice but to worry about this stuff. And it is also bending over backward to prevent the Republicans from bringing up that "angry black woman" malarkey again.  

How in the world can an anti-sexism, post-racial politics P.R. campaign come across as so damned... sexist, and even racist? Once again, this White House will succeed in pleasing nobody and offending everybody.

No Need to Worry About Food Stamps. My Salary 'Helps'!

NY Times Bestows Humanity on Drone Victims

Could it be that the New York Times and Reuters and other news organizations are finally starting to heed some of the much-deserved criticism of their own uncritical coverage of the Obama drone attacks? For the most part, they have been willing propaganda tools of the government, referring to all the victims of the escalating assaults as "militants" -- even in the face of evidence that hundreds of innocent men, women and children have been among those killed.

The Nation's Jeremy Scahill had the guts to go on TV yesterday and become the first "pundit" to call the Obama drone program in Yemen murder. His characterization provoked all the outrage we have come to expect from presidential apologists -- blaming the messenger for speaking the truth that our charismatic leader has declared himself judge, jury and executioner and is breaking the law. My hope is that Scahill is just among the first wave of a sea change in how the mainstream media will be covering this story. Could complicity be on the way out, and could some much-needed adversarial journalism be making a comeback?

An article in today's Times has at last referred to those killed in the latest drone strike in Waziristan as "people", and even implies that the escalating attacks by Obama are a campaign of terror to force the Pakistanis to reopen their supply routes to Afghanistan. The roads had been closed ever since an American strike killed two dozen Pakistani border soldiers and Obama refused to apologize.  Reporter Declan Walsh's lead paragraph:

Missiles fired from a suspected American drone killed at least 14 people in Pakistan’s tribal belt early Monday, the third strike in as many days and a signal of the Obama administration’s determination to press ahead with the controversial covert campaign even as it conducts tense political negotiations in Islamabad.

(snip)

Pakistani officials said on Monday that two missiles slammed into a compound and a pick-up truck in Hassu Khel, a small village just south of Mir Ali, the second largest town of North Waziristan. Between 14 and 16 people were killed in the attack, officials said, making it the deadliest in the tribal belt since November 2011.

A journalist from the area said the compound was being used by Uzbek, Tajik and Turkmen militants fighting for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an Al Qaeda-affiliated extremist group.

This is a small start in truth-telling to be sure, but an improvement all the same in the usual journalistic dialogue on the drone attacks. Heretofore, it's been five militants killed here, a dozen terrorists killed there. No names, no evidence. But notice how Walsh carefully differentiates the geography from the people living in it. He also goes to the trouble to identify by name the various factions suspected of operating in the area, rather than simply calling them "militants" or "al Qaeda associates."


Walsh even quotes a Pakistani official who directly accuses the Obama Administration of conducting the drone strikes out of political motives, as a boost to the re-election campaign. And when a White House official is reached for comment on the sudden surge in Drone strikes in heavily populated civilian areas, he mumbles something about an annoying cloud hanging around for weeks before it finally cleared up enough for the joystick operators to get a pristine-enough view of their projected bugsplats. (Of course he didn't use those words, but the subtext was evident.)

It was almost as though Walsh was turning to Glenn Greenwald for a Journalism 101 refresher course:

There is, as usual, no indication (wrote Greenwald recently) that these media outlets have any idea whatsoever about who was killed in these strikes. All they know is that “officials” (whether American or Pakistani) told them that they were “militants,” so they blindly repeat that as fact. They “report” this not only without having the slightest idea whether it’s true, but worse, with the full knowledge that the word “militant” is being aggressively distorted by deceitful U.S. government propaganda that defines the term to mean: any “military-age males” whom we kill (the use of the phrase “suspected militants” in the body of the article suffers the same infirmity).

How is it possible to have any informed democratic debate over a policy about which the U.S. media relentlessly propagandizes this way? If drone strikes kill nobody other than “militants,” then very few people will even think about opposing them (and that’s independent of the fact that the word “militant” is a wildly ambiguous term — militant about what? — though it is clearly designed (when combined with “Pakistan”) to evoke images of those who attacked the World Trade Center). Debate-suppression is not just the effect but the intent of this propaganda: like all propaganda, it is designed to deceive the citizenry in order to compel acquiescence to government conduct.

Meanwhile, the United States continues its doubly inhumane practice of raining its drone bombs down upon the rescuers and mourners of the initial rounds of attacks. The Guardian is calling the undeclared war on Pakistan a blitz, with the article alternately calling the victims "people", "militants" or the traditional, ass-covering "suspected militants."

I am still waiting for the mainstream press to start calling Obama's killing spree a vile episode of state-sponsored terrorism that has nothing at all to do with taking out anonymous militants. It has everything to do with killing civilians to force the Pakistani government to cave and open up its roads, to make it easier and cheaper for the American occupiers to move their idle Humvees into Afghanistan and continue waging their forever war.

De Agony of Detweet

If you're a gaffe voyeur or a Twitter freak or both, here's another fun tool from the same folks who brought you that site showing you how to gloat over your congress critter's lousy vocabulary. It's called Politwoops, and it purports to gather up all the deleted tweets of random politicians.

It may also be totally illegal, or unethical, in that it seems to violate Twitter's terms of service. However, Twitter cops are few and far between -- and so far, nobody has expressed much of an interest in protecting the rights of that red-faced somebody who just now thought to delete a Tweet bragging about donating to Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign. According to Adweek:

Politwoops, which has existed in 12 other countries for several years, muddies the waters of privacy with regard to deleted tweets further, as the service exists primarily to hold political leaders accountable for that which they've broadcast and then deleted via Twitter. That might actually be a Twitter no-no.

See Twitter's 'Developer Rules of the Road,' second section of the page, under rule number four, "Be a good partner to Twitter", section B.

"Respect the features and functionality embedded with or included in Twitter Content or the Twitter API. Do not attempt to interfere with, intercept, disrupt, filter, or disable any features of the Twitter API or Twitter service, and you should only surface actions that are organically displayed on Twitter.

* For example, your Service should execute the unfavorite and delete actions by removing all relevant messaging and Twitter Content, not by publicly displaying to other end users that the Tweet was unfavorited or deleted."

The project, unveiled this week by the Sunlight Foundation, aims to let us all know every time a politician deletes a tweet. It doesn't matter if they erase it the minute they submit it. It is always, always too late. If mistakes were made, they can't be unmade. They made their tweet, now they must lie in it.

 The growing collection of more than 3,000 tweets in the past six months includes screenshots of included links and has individual pages for each politician. The Politwoops archive serves as an illuminating rough draft of how politicians and campaigns hone their social media messaging and amend their record. The collection includes previously-reported episodes like Senator Chuck Grassley's hacked account and other deletions that slipped by unnoticed, like Representative Jeff Miller tweeting a link to a Facebook poll asking, "Was Obama born in the United States?"

There appears to be a lag in the deletion listings of about 16 hours, so if you like your gaffe news fresh, this might not be the site for you. Just a quick glance at the latest deleted politiwoops page left me yawning. For example, redneck Texas senator John Cornyn is obviously character count-disabled, having de-tweeted the following: "Those who claim voter ID rules are 'racist' ignore fact you can't rent apt, get utilities or cash check without." 

Rep Gregory Meeks almost immediately deleted a tweet saying he had enjoyed meeting with some elementary school children, having apparently decided the session was pure torture.

And the sleazy pols are beginning to catch on that their deleted Tweets are on display for all the bored world see. Rep. Danny Rehberg wrote: "Now, thanks to #politwoops, Twitter mistakes - like government mistakes - are around for good. Best to get both right the first time." He immediately deleted the message, but too late now! His words and the words of his cohorts will go down in cyberhistory for our disdainful amusement.

(Unless, of course, Iran retaliates and infects Twitter with a blowback virus.)