Sequestration: SVU

There's a new crime show playing in America. It's called Sequestration: Special Victims Unit.

It incorporates a trite Good Cop/Bad Cop gimmick so unoriginal that it should have lost its ability to fool people by the time Dragnet went off the air last century. But since this hackneyed device retains its uncanny ability to fool most of the people some of the time, or at least some of the people all of the time, the propaganda hacks will only give up their tried and true technique over your dead bodies.

Here's the newest version of the stale corporate plot:

President Obama and his boys and girls in blue (as in Dog) join forces with a group of out-of-control, sadistic, and eminently useful Republican renegades to sweep up a huge swath of the tired, the poor, and the massively huddled in an indiscriminate budgetary dragnet.

Obama and the Democrats then play Good Cop, pretending to want to help the same people they've just arrested, bringing them a rickety folding chair to sit on, a few liberal crumbs from the rusted-out vending machine down the hall, promises of a better tomorrow, tomorrow -- if they will only cooperate with the authorities, and give up Grandma and Grandpa as part of a Grand Plea Bargain. It seems the ultimate goal of Sequestration was always to forcibly wean people from their anti-capitalist addiction to Social Security and Medicare.

Obama lieutenant Gene Sperling admitted as much on the Sunday talk shows. The kids being kicked out of Head Start are the unfortunate but necessary decoys being used to entrap the real criminals: seniors greedily sucking up all that medical care, and daring to collect on the retirement insurance programs they've paid into all of their working lives. Regular people could be rendered so much more lucrative if only Wall Street could get its lunch-hooks onto the great social programs of the 30s and 60s. 

The Republicans, meanwhile, perform their role of Bad Cop with abandon. They offer no deals. Instead, they flagrantly wield their whips, their chains, their brass knuckles, their vocal derision. They don't even bother pretending they're not under the direct control of the plutocrats. They don't attempt to hide the relish with which they will grind the poor, the tired, the huddled masses into one giant steaming puddle of bug-splat.

Obama and the good cops, of course, are not taking the humane course of simply letting their special victims go free without any punishment or further ado. For the foreseeable future, the collateral damage will remain sequestered in the holding cell of austerity.

As the New York Times reports, the Good Cop Democrats and the Bad Cop Republicans have agreed to extend funding for the federal government at the post-sequester level, i.e., minus $85 billion, until the end of the current fiscal year (Sept. 30) “most likely allow(ing) the across-the-board spending reductions to remain in place for months if not years.”

In other words, an open-ended jail sentence for those caught up in the indiscriminate dragnet, with only the faintest hope for parole. Meanwhile, the too-big-to-fail banks are not only immune from prosecution, they are still being gifted with billions of dollars in backdoor bailouts, paid for by the very same people who are being victimized all over again by Sequestration.

So, where is the outrage? Oh, I forgot. Good Cop Obama really, really feels for the victims. He calls their punishment "dumb" at press conferences far away from scene of the crime. He is not, he says, a dictator, so what can he do? But meanwhile, you can donate to his legacy-burnishing slush fund social welfare group known as Organizing for Action. If you can raise $500,000 he will even grace you with four private chitchat sessions a year. And it's all perfectly, corruptly, disgustingly legal.

Meanwhile, freeze!  Put your hands in the air, legs wide apart, anything you say or do will be used against you, and if you don't have a lawyer or a lobbyist, tough shit. You're all under arrest.

Choking on Apathy

According to a new study, people the wide world over have suddenly stopped giving a damn about the filthy air they breathe and the contaminated water they drink. Concern levels are at their lowest in 20 years.  Smog, schmog. We are suffering, according to the New York Times, from a mass outbreak of Environmental Warning Fatigue (not to be confused with the Outrage Fatigue Syndrome I've discussed in recent posts.)

Hmmm. Isn't it ironic that the paper of record is publishing the results of a new study on Environmental Meh at the exact same time it decided to ditch its popular Green Blog, close on the heels of the trashing of its entire Environmental Desk? Like Kermit the Frog, the Gray Lady apparently does not find it easy being green. So she's just being mean.

First, the phenomenon of environmental brain fog. The reason I'm calling it brain fog is because people don't seem to be connecting pollution with climate change. From the GlobeScan report cited by the Times:

Asked how serious they consider each of six environmental problems to be—air pollution, water pollution, species loss, automobile emissions, fresh water shortages, and climate change—fewer people now consider them “very serious” than at any time since tracking began twenty years ago.

Climate change is the only exception, where concern was lower from 1998 to 2003 than it is now. Concern about air and water pollution, as well as biodiversity, is significantly below where it was even in the 1990s. Many of the sharpest falls have taken place in the past two years.

The study, the Times article and the discontinuation of its environmental coverage also conveniently coincide with the Friday night dump of the State Department's preliminary report on the environmental impact of the filth-producing Keystone tar sands pipeline. Hint: our corporate-controlled government says the free flow of one of most polluting substances on the planet will be minimal to non-existent. What a shock.

Also, as an aside -- while there is no evidence that the GlobeScan survey itself was skewed in any way, I think we have to be wary about the use to which it may be put by the moneyed elites. Will the Keystone XL pipeline boosters point to generalized public ennui as the perfect excuse to grant final approval over the protests of the increasingingly marginalized environmental groups? The company's corporate client roster has, after all, included such global heavy-hitters as Goldman Sachs, BP, Citigroup and Royal Dutch Shell. According to Wikipedia, it is a public research consultant which relies on "the wisdom of crowds". So far, I have been unable to discover on whose behalf they commissioned the survey on environmental ennui. But it'll be interesting to see how the PTBs put the findings to use (or misuse). 

Still, I give GlobeScan props for pointing out in a separate blogpost by Sam Mountford that global public apathy about the environment is closely tied to the global economic meltdown:

The timing of this fall in concern (in public concern about the environment) is no coincidence. The period since 2009 has witnessed the most sustained period of economic strife in most of the world’s major economies for the better part of a century. All our polling suggests that, while alarm about the economic situation and jobs has retreated from the stratospheric levels it reached in 2008, it has stabilized at a much higher level than before the crisis. The full ramifications of the banking collapses, ensuing government bailouts and cripplingly high levels of public indebtedness that have resulted have only slowly become apparent. And bluntly, for many citizens, these appear to pose a much clearer and more present threat to their well-being than environmental jeopardy, which for most people remains hidden from view.

Meanwhile, New York Times environmental blogger Andrew Revkin has written a scathing dirge on the demise of the Green Blog, adding that the paper will still blithely and profitably continue publishing its nine fashion, dining and lifestyle blogs, its four business blogs and its four or five technology blogs. He snarkily warns that if you care to complain to the Gray Bitch (my appellation, not his), you'd better make sure your subscription is up to date first. We can't have "you environmentalists" stealing valuable corporate information, y'know? It might put a microscopic dent in the bloated profits of the One Percent. It might poke a hole in the Fog of Bore.

Madness In High Places

Can the Obama machine get any more crazy-cynical? I just found this email from campaign hack Jim Messina in my spam folder:

Karen,

Brace yourself.

If congressional Republicans don't act by tomorrow, we're going to be hit by a series of devastating, automatic budget cuts called the sequester.

It's a sledgehammer to the budget, our economy, and millions of Americans across the country -- and the most frustrating part? It doesn't have to happen.

The majority of Americans support President Obama's balanced approach to deficit reduction -- add your name if you do, too.

So far, congressional Republicans are refusing to compromise -- all because they don't want to close tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires, vacation homes, and corporate jets. Seriously.

This has very real consequences.

On the chopping block are 10,000 teaching jobs, more than 70,000 kids' spots in Head Start, $35 million for local fire departments, $43 million to make sure seniors don't go hungry, and access to nutrition assistance for 600,000 women and their families. That's just a few of the things we'll lose.

President Obama has put forth a balanced deficit reduction plan with smart spending cuts that protect the critical investments needed to strengthen middle-class families and our economy.

We need to send a strong signal about where Americans stand on this issue.

Add your name today:

http://mybarackobama.com/Tell-the-GOP-to-Act

Thanks,

Messina
 

Incidentally, when I clicked on the (disabled by me) link at the end, one of those warning messages popped up about there being a problem with the Obama website's security certificate. Access was denied, to what I can only assume would be a shameless plea for cash for the presidential slush fund. So enter at your own risk. At the very least, they will install a big fat tracking cookie on your computer to follow your every keystroke.

But anyway -- the email was already outdated by the time I got around to reading it. John Boehner is refusing to engage in any more Grand Bargain talks with Barry. The White House is also apparently putting the kibosh on any more fear-fomenting. That is because the whole idea behind the contrived sequester was to make the defense cuts so unpalatable that the Republicans would be forced to give Obama needed cover for his long-planned gutting of the social safety net. The disease to please the Wall Street titans who vetted and approved his candidacy in the first place is still festering. Stayed tuned for another three years of one manufactured fiscal crisis after the other until Obama gets his way. 

And meanwhile, they're using a sophisticated internet campaign to lie about it. Lie Number One: The presidential minions are telling supporters that the only way to avoid the sequester is to forge that much longed-for grandiose bargain with the GOP. Not true. They could nullify sequestration, repeal the law that spawned the whole austerity stupidity. Obama is not suggesting the actual cancellation of the sequester. Not by a long shot. Lie Number Two: In poll after poll after poll, the majority of Americans want to strengthen the safety net. They want jobs. People do not care about deficit reduction. And to the extent that they do, it is only as a result of the contant barrage of deficit hysteria propaganda being spewed by the corporate media with the unlimited billions of Pete Peterson's Fix the Debt astroturf cabal. Lie Number Three: President Obama wants to implement the Pete Peterson/Simpson-Bowles chained CPI for reducing lifetime Social Security benefits. So, for Messina to moan in an email that he cares about seniors suffering under the sequester,  is not only beyond hypocritical, it is downright cruel. Lie Number Four: most sequestration cuts will unfold gradually, not "hit us with a sledgehammer" overnight.

President Obama is insulting our intelligence. He is trying to fool us into participating in our own destruction. He is using a mendacious email blast like a shot of anesthesia to prepare us for his scalpel. By  fooling people into signing a consent form for "smart" surgery they don't even need and will end up hurting them, he is committing some mighty egregious malpractice. The austerian medicine he's peddling during this time of economic stagnation and joblessness and the most severe income inequality since the Gilded Age is pure poison.

First, do no harm, said the wise Hippocrates. Oops. Never mind. They don't even make real doctors swear that little oath any more.

But I was heartened to receive one very wise and true email this morning from my friend Peter S., who was responding to my comment about money running politics on Paul Krugman's column last night. He shares this quote from Guy Debord:

"For the first time, the same people are the masters of everything that is done and of everything that is said about what is done. And so Madness 'hath builded her house in the high places of the city.' "

When Progress Means Regress

I treated myself to a teensy bit of misguided hope a few weeks ago when I read that more than 100 Congressional Democrats had written a letter to President Obama urging him to remove Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid from the chopping block in the latest installment of manufactured brinkmanship.

Of course, if you'd paid attention to the actual semantics of the letter, you might have noticed that these congress critters didn't actually say they would vote against any such Grand Bargain Obama hopes to negotiate with the Republicans. And now that a few real Progressives have written another letter vowing they will buck Obama and vote against the planned cuts, a pretty astounding 54 of the 70 members of the House Progressive Caucus have refused to sign on. Three-quarters of the caucus membership have wimped out, regressed, caved, been bribed, brainwashed, paid off, personally seduced by Obama. Pick your poison.

 I was actually pretty surprised that even Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who up until a few months ago had been a most outspoken champion of New Deal and Great Society protections, is now among those unwilling to go so far as to defy the president.

Norman Solomon of the RootsAction advocacy group writes:

What about the other 54 members of the Progressive Caucus? Their absence from the letter is a clear message to the Obama White House, which has repeatedly declared its desire to cut the Social Security cost of living adjustment as well as Medicare. In effect, those 54 non-signers are signaling: Mr. President, we call ourselves “progressive” but we are unwilling to stick our necks out by challenging you in defense of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; we want some wiggle room that you can exploit.

In contrast, the House members on the short list of the letter’s signers deserve our praise for taking a clear stand: Brown, Cartwright, Conyers, DeFazio, Ellison, Faleomavaega, Grayson, G. Green, Grijalva, Gutierrez, A. Hastings, Kaptur, Lee, McGovern, Nadler, Napolitano, Nolan, Serrano, Takano, Velazquez and Waters.
 

President Obama remarked during the Democratic convention that he was confident he would eventually be able to bring the bulk of erstwhile Progressives on board with his Catfood Commission austerian approach of raising the Medicare age and initiating the chained CPI method of reducing Social Security benefits. He certainly got Millionaire Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on his side more than a year ago. See if these other Congressional Quislings who still dare call themselves Progressives serve your particular district:

Karen Bass, Xavier Becerra, Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonameci, Michael Capuano, Andre Carson, Donna Christenson, Judy Chu, Yvette Clarke, William "Lacy" Clay, Emanuel Cleaver, Daniel Cicciline, David Cohen, Elijah Cummings, Daniel Davis,  Rosa DeLaura, Donna Edwards, Sam Farr, Chaka Fatah, Lois Frankel, Marcia Fudge, Janice Hahn, Jared Huffman, Rush Holt, Michael Honda, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Hakeem Jeffries, Eddie Bernice Jackson, Joe Kennedy III, Anne McLane Kuster, John Lewis, David Loebsack, Ben Ray Lujan, Carolyn Maloney, Ed Markey, Jim McDermott, George Miller, Gwen Moore, Jim Moran, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Frank Pallone, Ed Pastor, Chellie Pingree, Mark Pocan, Jared Pollis, Charles Rangel, Lucille Roybal-Allard,  Linda Sanchez, Jan Schakowsky, Louise Slaughter, Bennie Thompson, John Tierney, Mel Watt and Peter Welch. 

You can contact them here. Demand that your campaign contributions be returned. Threaten to join the Tea Party. Do whatever it takes to make them feel more afraid of you than they are of the Wall Street branch of the Democratic Party -- which, come to think of it, now amounts to the whole damn blighted trunk. The progressives have shrunken to a mere twig, hanging on for dear life, blowing in the toxic wind of our corrupt politics.  

Even so, a recent blind poll conducted by Business Insider reveals that nearly half of Republicans support the Progressive Caucus's own plan to avert the sequester over that of their own blighted party.This plan, naturally, is not getting any attention from either Obama or the corporate media hacks now in thrall to the Centrist Cult's astroturf Fix the Debt propaganda campaign being funded by Wall Street tycoons with the complicity of self-described Democrats.

As the Sequester Festers

Denying Republican claims that she is out to frighten people with scare tactics, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano today warned that we are at horrible risk of a terror attack unless we continue pouring money into the voracious maw of the Orwellian surveillance state (a/k/a the tax-immune defense/spy industry.)

And almost as if reinforce that salient point, her published remarks on The Hill blog were accompanied by this cookie-generated advertisement from Boeing -- showing a menacing predator drone about to swoop down at you at the stroke of twilight:  

 

You may or may not see this particular ad when you visit the page, because of the constantly evolving nature of the Google-generated marketing beast. The words "sequester", "terror" and "the economy" were also spawning a half-page blurb from BP, about how much it cares about the Gulf and all of America, as it strives to cut a pre-trial deal with Uncle Sam, to get out of paying any more millions than it absolutely has to in order to cover its Deepwater Horizon pollution liability.

Like the drone ad says, the corporacracy is always dreaming up new ways to innovate and endure.

But I digress. As I started to tell you, Janet Napolitano is trying to scare reassure Americans that the self-inflicted sequestration cuts of $85 billion "will make it awfully, awfully tough to mitigate threats." Of course, she was really talking about the ephemeral threats of outside terrorists, rather than the very real threats imposed by our own homegrown domestic policy makers -- to wit, Congress and the White House.

Napolitano warns that sequestration will force the furloughs of those friendly TSA agents who pat you down at airport security checkpoints! It will tragically reduce the number of beds for the record number of undocumented immigrants currently being housed in for-profit privatized prisons! Oh, the humanity. Oh, the terrible horrible no good very bad day at DHS!

Meanwhile, as Napolitano and other cabinet minions do their fear-fomenting duty on the complicit cable TV news shows, President Obama is showing his own true cynical colors. Rather than simply urging Congress to nullify the whole stupid sequester, he is once again calling for a Grand Bargain of safety net "reforms" in order to avoid the horrific specter of cuts to Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and all the other monoliths of the endless war industry. Their job is to keep us cowed and themselves secure with the endless stream of corporate welfare dollars.

And, coincidentally, Obama will glibly regret the coldly prearranged cuts in day care subsidies, AIDS treatment and prevention, shelters for battered women, home heating and low-income housing assistance, and myriad other programs reserved for those in such dire need that they cannot possibly afford a lobby or even an Internet connection in order to advance their own causes.

Obama hopes to accomplish the unraveling of the New Deal by utilizing the David Brooks formula of intergenerational warfare. As he said in one overlooked section of his State of the Union speech,

Yes, the biggest driver of our long-term debt is the rising cost of health care for an aging population. And those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms -- otherwise, our retirement programs will crowd out the investments we need for our children, and jeopardize the promise of a secure retirement for future generations.

Actually, Medicare spending is slowing down. But never mind facts. This is the same tired old refrain constantly droned out by right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and centrist cults like Pete Peterson's Third Way: that allowing old people to live out their lives comfortably is tantamount to sucking the life out of the grandkids, not to mention all the incipient fetuses and zygotes of the future. Of course, when Obama sings it, this silliness is magically transformed into a soaring progressive anthem called "Oh Beautiful for Balanced Approach, for Equal Waves of Pain."

One of the programs conveniently placed on the sequestration chopping block is Head Start. So what more perfect way to save all the poor preschoolers than to guilt-trip the geezers into "sharing the sacrifice" via the Chained CPI method of cutting lifetime Social Security benefits?

As economist Bill Black so succinctly puts it, "The only logical inference that can be drawn is that Obama remains committed to inflicting the 'Grand Bargain' (really, the Grand Betrayal) on the Nation in his quest for a 'legacy' and continues to believe that the Sequester provides him the essential leverage he feels he needs to coerce Senate progressives to adopt austerity, make deep cuts in vital social programs, and to begin to unravel the safety net." 

Obama's vaunted "balanced approach" is, in fact, skewed heavily toward cuts: a ratio of two-thirds cuts to one-third "revenue", to be exact. This, despite the fact that austerity is already shrinking the deficit, despite the fact that underemployment and stagnating wages are becoming the new normal in the Dystopian States of America

I don't know about you. But these constant re-runs of Disaster Capitalism Theater are getting a tad stale. It's gotten to the point where we can't even escape into the mindless never-land of Oscar Night without FLOTUS crashing the show with some Banana Republic noblesse oblige. Complete with a dressy militaristic backdrop, just to give you that warm and fuzzy Homeland-y feeling.

And the Winner Is.... Not You!

 

 

The Crown Jewels of the Obama Administration

Those of us not yet moribund with Outrage Fatigue Syndrome (see previous post) were flabbergasted to learn that while tens of thousands of  people were protesting against the Keystone Pipeline in front of the White House last weekend, the president was far, far away in Florida, golfing with oil and gas barons.

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama was off on her annual Aspen ski vacation, hosted once again by billionaires Jim and Paula Crown, who own and control a big chunk of defense/security contractor General Dynamics. The Crowns, as you may know, are prominent Obama campaign bundlers,  having helped to finance Obama from the very start of his career in Illinois state politics. The General Dynamics arm of their vast corporate empire now has major contracts with every single one of this country's intelligence agencies. Although it has reported a paper loss in profits since the winding down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the looming budget sequester, the prospects of an endless drone war and Orwellian spy state have them champing at the bit. 

And why not? The use of drones under Obama is skyrocketing, as is the growth of military bases throughout the world. Africa is all set to be re-colonized by American corporate interests. Therefore, an annual ski junket for the Obama women, along with a few relatively paltry donations to his continuing campaign apparatus is the least the Crown family can do. It is the slim price they have to pay to remain full-fledged and well-compensated partners in the state-sponsored terror campaign that constitutes Obama's foreign policy, euphemistally described as the disposition matrix of pre-emptive self-defense. In other words, an illegal campaign of murder-by-drone of civilian "pre-criminals."

Nicolas Davis has written an exhaustive, detail-oriented account of the tangled relationship of the Obamas and the Crowns. It is well worth a read. His chilling conclusion:

Benjamin Ferencz, who wrote the preface to my book on the U.S. war against Iraq, is the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He has described how the lead defendant at the Einsatzgruppen trial, SS-Gruppenfurher Otto Ohlendorf, Ph.D., defended the massacres of tens of thousands of civilians with an argument that is all too familiar today: preemptive self-defense. Ohlendorf told the court that Germany invaded other countries to prevent them from attacking it; that Jews had to be killed because “everyone knew” they supported the Bolsheviks; and that Jewish children had to be killed because, if they grew up and found out what the Germans had done to their parents, they too would become enemies of Germany.

As Ferencz explains, this illegitimate principle of preemptive self-defense is the same one by which Presidents Bush and Obama justify their war crimes today: our fear entitles us to attack countries and kill people to prevent them doing the same to us or our allies at some point in the future. Ohlendorf never showed any remorse for his crimes, even as he went to the gallows at Landsberg Prison in 1951. He was the highly educated product of a political system dominated by military-industrial interests and extreme nationalism that made war crimes seem justifiable, rational or even necessary. By selecting its senior officials through “legalized bribery” within a superficially democratic system, the United States has developed a more sophisticated way to institutionalize and justify ever-expanding plutocracy, militarism and war crimes. This may be more sustainable and palatable—but that does not necessarily make it less dangerous.

General Dynamics, meanwhile, has a brand new gadget it wants to sell to Obama for some of that civilian spying and pre-emptive killing. Called the Micro Air Vehicle (MAV), it is capable of perching, hovering, flying, spying -- and killing you.  Conor Friedersdorf, who cadged a copy of a promotional video that General Dynamics produced for the Air Force, has posted it on his Atlantic blog. He calls it the "most terrifying drone video yet." (I hadn't realized there were apparently a whole series of scary drone videos out there terrorizing Americans. The real enchilada, of course, is terrorizing and bug-splatting whole neighborhoods in Pakistan).You can watch the video here. It has all the hallmarks of state-sponsored dread: dystopian urban graphics, a doomsday soundtrack, the constant drumbeat of paranoia. It is perfectly designed to boost the adrenaline and checkbook-grabbing urges of every procurement official who watches it, instilling fear of all the dangerous civilian populations who walk, breathe and eat, both at home and abroad.  Writes Friedersdorf:

When I watch that simulation I am horrified. I also think to myself, this technology is more likely to diminish American security than to enhance it. In a world without micro-drones, our military remains overwhelmingly powerful. But what about a world where micro-drones are pervasive? Who knows? Sure, we have a technological advantage right now, but micro-drones sure seem like a disruptive technology that will eventually help rather than hinder attempts at asymmetric warfare.

Yet the U.S. government is making no effort to enlist other powerful nations with the most to lose and establish international norms against the use of drones (in the way we've stigmatized biological weapons) -- rather, we're continuing to fuel a drone arms race that guarantees widespread proliferation. Perhaps such an effort would fail, but to never even try seems shortsighted.

How far ahead is President Obama thinking?
 

He might have asked what President Obama is thinking, sending his wife and daughters to frolic on the largesse of war profiteers and weapons manufacturers at the same time he is pretending to campaign for domestic gun control.  But perhaps I am being unfair. The Crown Family is like family to him. He said so himself at their home last year at yet another of their many bribe-fests fund-raisers:

.... actually the Crown family from the grandpas all the way to the grandkids, they supported me when I ran for State Senate; supported me when I lost a congressional race; supported me when I won my Senate race; and then supported me in my run for the presidency. These guys have been friends for a really long time. And Michelle and I love them to death, and to see how remarkable their children have turned out, watching them grow up, is a great thing to see. So please give the Crowns a big round of applause. (Applause.)

So I am not going to give a long speech. This really is family. You guys know me.

And know him they should. The Crowns are part of the shadow government, not only supplying the state with its weapons and the politicians with their money, but essentially dictating policy at the same time. Grandpa Lester Crown has reportedly even served as a personal envoy between Israeli hardliners and the president over a potential attack on Iran.

Just like family. The Crowns are also major shareholders in JP Morgan Chase, that too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-jail bank the size of a country that has enjoyed continuous deregulation and immunity from prosecution in the Obama administration. Jim Crown, who  heads the bank's risk policy board, recently became embroiled in the London Whale Fail scandal, in which billions of dollars were mysteriously "lost." No indictments, no investigation.

Just like family. One big, happy, fat, incestuous family. The old name for the corporatization of government was fascism. Now they prefer to call it Public Private Partnership. Euphemisms are the sugar that helps the propaganda medicine go down.

 

A Most Ingenious Paradox

In 2004, during the height of the Bush era crimes against humanity and logic, The Onion ran a piece called "Nation's Liberals Suffering from Outrage Fatigue".

It provides a list of symptoms necessary for an official diagnosis of outrage fatigue syndrome. The general theory behind this creeping scourge is that the more information people get about government corruption, the more inured to it they become. After awhile, people have become so benumbed that each new jolting revelation of political malfeasance becomes one more shot of Novocaine. Too many doses of outrage end up being anesthetizing rather than stimulating. In medicine, this is called called the paradoxical reaction.

With so many right-wing shams to choose from, it's simply too daunting for the average, left-leaning citizen to maintain a sense of anger," said Rachel Neas, the (fake) study's director. "By our estimation, roughly 70 percent of liberals are experiencing some degree of lethargy resulting from a glut of civil-liberties abuses, education funding cuts, and exorbitant military expenditures."

Liberals in the Age of Obama  find themselves now, as then, requiring ever greater doses of government corruption and hypocrisy in order to maintain any semblance of righteous indignation. And as a (real) new study by Salon shows, when Obama is the provocateur of what would normally constitute an epidemic of outrage (over failure to prosecute banksters, his campaign of targeted drone assassinations, unprecedented secrecy, record deportations of undocumented immigrants, draconian whistleblowing prosecutions, establishment of a political action slush fund that accepts unlimited corporate money, selling out education to the highest corporate bidders, etcetera and so forth) the typical popular reaction is a big collective Meh.

Outrage is dead. Long live ennui. Welcome to the new age of American totalitarianism.

That the daily doses of outrage coming from Washington are having a parodoxical effect on the populace and the journalistic class that covers it is evidenced today in the placement of, and reaction to, a New York Times blockbuster revealing that President Obama is refusing to hand over legal opinions on his Oval Office murder squad to Congress, and trying to get away with it through some cynical political horsetrading with the Republicans over Benghazi-Gate. In exchange for handing over some emails on what he knew about the firebombing of the consulate and when he knew it, Obama will try to force through the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director with Republican votes, without ever having to explain just what it is that he thinks gives him the right to kill people. If Congress agrees to turn a blind eye to his role as judge, jury and executioner, then he will accomodate them with a few meaningless emails on an unrelated topic.

Obama would rather please Lindsey Graham than Ron Wyden. His recent promises of transparency over his kill list are just that -- empty promises. His continued success at stringing his fans along with glib words is continuously astounding.

The article initially appeared in the desirable and visible top left corner of the digital homepage late last night. But by this morning, it had been relegated to smaller type, buried between a piece on the Pistorius case and a retrospective on the red tape encountered during Hurricane Katrina. More than 12 hours later, the Times had published only 100 reader comments -- and judging from the low reader recommendation tally, the story was not generating much interest. But I guess we should take comfort from the fact that among those readers who are taking an interest, their reaction is almost universally scathing against Obama and Brennan. Here's my own comment:

If the White House is refusing to allow Congress to see the legal opinions, then it can only be because either the opinions are as embarrassingly flimsy as the paper they are written on, or because they are damning enough to constitute physical evidence of war crimes. And who knows -- maybe they don't even exist at all, or are rough drafts written in invisible ink. Perhaps this Administration is wary of what happened to the Bush Administration after they released their own opinions on torture -- and foreign governments proceeded to issue indictments and arrest warrants based on violations of the Geneva convention.

This refusal to provide the requested documents is even more troubling given that only last week, President Obama promised more transparency about the drone program, acknowledging that nobody should just take his word for it and that we have a right to know "the parameters" around the program. His alleged refusal to furnish the legal opinions to even his own party, while making a show of compromising with the Republicans over a contrived scandal, betrays a stunning cynicism and a contempt for the rule of law and the democratic process.

Maybe there is also such a thing as immunity to outrage fatigue in a certain stubborn segment of the populace. But for now anyway, the herd immunity to the onslaught of virulence coming from the very top of our government remains the norm. The Obama Administration represents both the disease and the treatment of it. The president quips, the politicians quibble, the journalists nibble, the people are stuck right in the middle. A most ingenious paradox.

How quaint the ways of Paradox
At common sense she gently mocks. (Gilbert & Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance)