You might be familiar with Dexter, the fictional sociopathic killer with the heart of gold whose life is a constant struggle with his so-called "dark passenger."
Dexter keeps his inner nasty twin (sort of a Super-Id, actually) in check by getting a job as a blood-spatter pattern analyst with the Miami Police Department, thus getting all kinds of insider info on some truly evil guys and gals even nastier than himself. Sometimes he slips up and gets caught torturing and killing his fellow psychos. But, like any sociopath worth his salt, he can fast-talk his way out of pickles that would have a normal person fired or imprisoned or even dead.
So here's a pop quiz: In what episode did Dexter tell his bosses that all his mistakes and transgressions were contained in a mysterious black box in an unknown location, thinking that this excuse might actually fly? And lo and behold, it flew? The brass actually believed his bullshit, because that is just how convincingly good this guy is?
The correct answer is N/A. Because the black box story actually comes from the fervid mind of disgraced fictional broadcaster Brian Williams. And his bosses apparently believed it, because he just got another job at the network after the whole world assumed he was toast.
Brian Williams is the corporate media version of Dexter. He got caught slaying the truth, he got sent to the naughty chair for his serial prevarication and extreme narcissism, and now he's back doing some pretend-penance at the MSNBC halfway house for disgraced news-readers. It's as if Dexter got demoted to sharing lab space with some underlings after deliberately tampering with evidence in a whole slew of major felony cases while accidentally disappearing a few perps while he was at it. The Establishment -- the media state, the police state, the congressional state -- is always in need of useful corrupt idiots offering their services for a very steep price.
Like any Superego veering toward the wrong side of the psychopath scale, Williams has a preternatural gift for separating himself from his own Dark Passenger. In an NBC inquisition conducted by his good friend Matt Lauer, he actually blamed his (alter) ego rather than himself for his mendacity. The guy who tortured the facts for years grotesquely proclaimed himself a victim of torture as he was banished from public view into solitary luxury confinement for four whole oppressive months.
He was even able to summon up a sincere-looking stream of nervous perspiration, which barely made a rivulet down his perfectly pancaked face as he clasped his hands in silent prayer -- in solidarity, I suppose, with all the other elite political hypocrites now holding their own prayerful vigils for victims of our latest mass slaughter... at the same time that they champion everyone's right to open-carry.
He pleaded that he'd always told his stories correctly before his Dark Passenger told them incorrectly. He summoned up enough ham acting skills to not let his natural glibness get too much in the way of behaving like a chastened human being during the friendly interview. Despite some telltale efforts of his Dark Ego to burst back on the surface, he played the part of "Brian Williams Raw" just capably enough to let New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley urge viewers to please give the guy a break already and let's all move on. The multimillionaire entertainer/torture victim/truth torturer has already suffered enough! The fact that he couldn't even make eye contact with his interviewer doesn't mean he won't be able to look a studio camera right in the eye to read headlines. So it's all good. Maybe he can slow-jam the news again, as ably as he apparently fast-talked his network bosses into letting him back in the fold.
Was there ever really an alternate ending to this horror show?
At least they finally kicked Dexter off the air for good.
Friday, June 19, 2015
Holy Hypocrisy!
The politically correct concern trolls are all upset because Bernie Sanders rallied for pension rights on Thursday instead of sanctimoniously bowing his head and quoting the Bible in the wake of our most recent mass shooting. He stood up for workers and unions right next to one of those "solemn vigils" held by the same politicians who suck at the teat of the military-industrial complex and wouldn't know how to give peace a chance if their lives depended on it.
"On a day when the national conversation is focused on the attack and victims and not presidential politics -- not to mention a day when Jeb Bush and Donald Trump said they would cancel campaign events in the key early primary state -- canceling your own campaign rally isn't a bad idea," sniffed Hunter Schwarz of the war-mongering Washington Post.
Oh my invisible guy in the sky: (OMIGITS!) Psychopaths like Jeb and the Donald are more politically correct than Bernie Sanders? The sky is falling, the sky is falling! If two loudmouth liars know enough to shut up for crass political purposes, why can't a loudmouth socialist? Um.... maybe because he's not wrapping himself in fake religion like the plutocratic mafiosi currently taking selfies of their own crocodile tears? Maybe because it's more Jesus-like to loudly rail against the money-changers in our Great National Tragedy Temple than it is to simper and sob by candlelight as they quietly take NRA and defense industry bribes under cover of darkness?
Get ready for about another week of phony grief from the usual suspects. Then we can get back to the New Abnormal of pay-to-play politics, high rolling fund-raisers, trade deal sausage-making, backstabbing and speechifying. And of course, there is no end in sight for Congressional approval or lack thereof for endless wars and billions of dollars in global arms sales to such wonderful folks as the Saudis -- who are now openly advertising for more professional executioners to keep up with a record domestic beheading spree.
"On a day when the national conversation is focused on the attack and victims and not presidential politics -- not to mention a day when Jeb Bush and Donald Trump said they would cancel campaign events in the key early primary state -- canceling your own campaign rally isn't a bad idea," sniffed Hunter Schwarz of the war-mongering Washington Post.
Oh my invisible guy in the sky: (OMIGITS!) Psychopaths like Jeb and the Donald are more politically correct than Bernie Sanders? The sky is falling, the sky is falling! If two loudmouth liars know enough to shut up for crass political purposes, why can't a loudmouth socialist? Um.... maybe because he's not wrapping himself in fake religion like the plutocratic mafiosi currently taking selfies of their own crocodile tears? Maybe because it's more Jesus-like to loudly rail against the money-changers in our Great National Tragedy Temple than it is to simper and sob by candlelight as they quietly take NRA and defense industry bribes under cover of darkness?
Get ready for about another week of phony grief from the usual suspects. Then we can get back to the New Abnormal of pay-to-play politics, high rolling fund-raisers, trade deal sausage-making, backstabbing and speechifying. And of course, there is no end in sight for Congressional approval or lack thereof for endless wars and billions of dollars in global arms sales to such wonderful folks as the Saudis -- who are now openly advertising for more professional executioners to keep up with a record domestic beheading spree.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Links/Open Thread
Nine killed in massacre in historic South Carolina black church. Lawmakers renew call for national gun control measures. Not. As the white gunman is sought captured, lawmakers renew calls to divert the FBI from creating arresting ISIS aspirants into investigating right wing extremism. Not. As a nation mourns, lawmakers stand united in diverting billions from PermaWar into a free national mental health program for all citizens. Not. The FCC calls for a renewal of the Fairness Doctrine and vows to pull the licenses of Fox, Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of the media/hate complex for their failure to broadcast in the public interest. LOL.
Pope Francis issues his long-awaited climate change encyclical. He blames man-made pollution. Denialists promptly see the light, praise the Lord and vow to curb emissions, demanding national energy savings legislation. Obama cancels drilling in the Arctic. I can dream, can't I?
Hillary is a closeted TPP booster. What a shock.
Despite Paul Krugman's best propagandistic efforts to tell us otherwise, Obamacare is actually helping to destroy what's left of the middle class. A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox. The technocratic neoliberati are singing with all the grim joy that their piratical Citigroup egos can muster.
Presidential politics are getting really, really, really peculiar. No kidding.
Four sleazy ways that the mainstream press is trying to marginalize the Bernie Sanders campaign. Only four?
(Please feel free to comment on whatever, within or without reason. It's one of those days.)
Pope Francis issues his long-awaited climate change encyclical. He blames man-made pollution. Denialists promptly see the light, praise the Lord and vow to curb emissions, demanding national energy savings legislation. Obama cancels drilling in the Arctic. I can dream, can't I?
Hillary is a closeted TPP booster. What a shock.
Despite Paul Krugman's best propagandistic efforts to tell us otherwise, Obamacare is actually helping to destroy what's left of the middle class. A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox. The technocratic neoliberati are singing with all the grim joy that their piratical Citigroup egos can muster.
Presidential politics are getting really, really, really peculiar. No kidding.
Four sleazy ways that the mainstream press is trying to marginalize the Bernie Sanders campaign. Only four?
(Please feel free to comment on whatever, within or without reason. It's one of those days.)
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Wanker, Not Anchor
I just got the breaking-news email from the New York Times: Lyin' Brian Williams is being kicked downstairs to MSNBC from his coveted anchor spot at the network. He will reportedly only be allowed to read breaking-news items at relatively rare intervals on the supposition that it would be exceedingly hard to insert a lie or a joke into only one or two telepromptered paragraphs. But never say never.
No word whether he will endure a salary cut from his reported $10 million-a-year contract. No word either on how many low-level reporters and crew will have be fired to make room for the Great One's return. But leave it to the Times to commiserate with a plutocratic wanker:
No word whether he will endure a salary cut from his reported $10 million-a-year contract. No word either on how many low-level reporters and crew will have be fired to make room for the Great One's return. But leave it to the Times to commiserate with a plutocratic wanker:
The new role is a humbling comedown for Mr. Williams, who before the controversy was one of the country’s most prominent and respected broadcast journalists.They got that one-fourth right. Williams is a broadcaster, but whether he is also respected or a journalist or humble is very much a matter of opinion. Then again, he and the Times honchos are all members of an elite club where nobody fails even when mistakes are made. Like the mistake of blaming a group of Irish students for falling to their own deaths because of their failure to notice the shoddy construction they were standing on.
The Sham Within the Fraud
In a sane and equitable democratic system, Rachel Dolezal probably never would have made the cut in the Great Frauds in the History of Snake Oil. But since this is an insane hyper-capitalistic country running on the fumes of consumerism and identity politics, Rachel is the hot trending topic this week. The spectacle of a white woman passing as black is not unique in our history, but you wouldn't know it from all the mass media hysteria surrounding this story.
Whether she is psychologically troubled or cynically opportunistic or altruistically sincere, Rachel Dolezal has done anybody who ever sucked at the teat of Hollywood and Madison Avenue and the media-political complex an enormous favor. She has, wittingly or not, exposed the fraud that is the essence of what one writer calls "neoliberal antiracism."
As Jodi Melamed of Marquette University explains in Represent and Destroy, it is precisely the official civil rights statutes on the American books as well as the mass media's shallow embrace of "diversity" and multiculturalism -- along with corporate-funded academia's complicit production of an elite black managerial-political class -- that paradoxically gives cover to the global racist predations of the American Imperium. The American political system was able to "capture" the energy of 60s and 70s social movements and then cynically put it to work for capitalism and international conquest.
The "outing" of Rachel Dolezal is only the latest consequence of the sham that is American racial equality. Insofar that it minimally exists, the plutocratic embrace of diversity is exposed more and more as a public relations gimmick: a means, writes Melamed, "to secure US interests, not an end in itself."
This profit motive of neoliberal inclusiveness was perfectly satirized in the Mad Men finale, in which the predatory psychopath Don Draper suddenly gets religion and teaches the whole world to sing in perfect multicultural harmony... while slurping bottles of Coke. Because it's the "real thing," and even black and brown people (or more precisely, their money) are entitled to "snow-white turtle doves."
The Rachel controversy is weirdly reminiscent of the marketing campaign of Coke. Pundits are now arguing about whether trans-racialism is as real a thing as trans-genderism. Which brand is more genuine: Coke or Pepsi? Caitlyn Jenner's photo-shopped Vanity Fair cover, or Rachel's enhanced pigmentation?
Of course, this identity politics controversy conveniently distracts us from paying any more attention to the ugly racist reality of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its embrace of the Malaysian slave trade, or noticing that ugly trans-fat will soon be banned by the most Transparent Administration Ever (TM). So I cynically wonder: are the big factory food conglomerates therefore already salivating to sue us in a secret investor state dispute tribunal somewhere in order to claw back millions in alleged lost profits for being denied the right to poison us with their fatty glop?
Did I mention that Coca-Cola (along with the Grocery Manufacturers lobby) is one of the 600 or so multinationals secretly dictating the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Did I even have to?
Since the oligarchs have "officially" stopped racism over here by allowing a rainbow coalition to buy their various products and propaganda, they pretend that they have the moral authority to impose their will, their bubbly drinks, their corporate tribunals, their power and their poisons to marginalized people all over the borderless One World. When liberals raised on Coke commercials and To Kill a Mockingbird elected our first black president, what more perfect opportunity for the ruling class racketeers to really, totally let loose with the hegemony and the wars and Wall Street-friendly policies that liberals would normally oppose? Barack Obama has been their perfect fig leaf salesman and enabler. As Melamed eloquently writes,
No wonder that Barack Obama viciously called black dissenters in Baltimore a bunch of "thugs" even as he wails about the temporary thwarting of his imperialistic pivot to Asia as encompassed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The spiritual power gained by the ruling class from his election is beginning to wane as he reaches the end of his tenure and an upstart social democrat named Bernie Sanders is exposing the dynastic Bush-Clinton Neoliberal Death Match in uncomfortably high relief.
Rachel Dolezal, meanwhile, has helped to further expose the cosmetic fraud of racial identity politics as sold to and by the liberal class. (Or more accurately, the corporate media are exposing it through their over-the-top coverage of Rachel Dolezal) The only thing that possibly made self-proclaimed liberals in the Age of Obama more uncomfortable was when socially acceptable and safe black TV dad Bill Cosby was exposed as a serial rapist. Because anti-racists have largely relied on media portrayals of successful African-Americans to give them aid and comfort, even as the lives and livelihoods of the vast majority of black and brown people have grown more precarious. It is the very elevation of a very tiny handful of successful blacks that allows us to stigmatize and pathologize huge swathes of what reactionaries are so fond of calling "black culture."
Rachel Dolezal was the perfect stereotype of what the white supremacist system calls an African-American success story: smart, educated, hard-working, safely bound up in corporate academia and party politics, exquisitely coiffed and dressed, and articulate. She was the very model of an acceptable assimilated black feminist. Until she wasn't.
In the space of a nanosecond she went from Clair Huxtable to Lindsay Lohan. She was not the "real thing." And the neoliberal class is not amused as the whole world watches the precarious edifice crumble.
Whether she is psychologically troubled or cynically opportunistic or altruistically sincere, Rachel Dolezal has done anybody who ever sucked at the teat of Hollywood and Madison Avenue and the media-political complex an enormous favor. She has, wittingly or not, exposed the fraud that is the essence of what one writer calls "neoliberal antiracism."
As Jodi Melamed of Marquette University explains in Represent and Destroy, it is precisely the official civil rights statutes on the American books as well as the mass media's shallow embrace of "diversity" and multiculturalism -- along with corporate-funded academia's complicit production of an elite black managerial-political class -- that paradoxically gives cover to the global racist predations of the American Imperium. The American political system was able to "capture" the energy of 60s and 70s social movements and then cynically put it to work for capitalism and international conquest.
The "outing" of Rachel Dolezal is only the latest consequence of the sham that is American racial equality. Insofar that it minimally exists, the plutocratic embrace of diversity is exposed more and more as a public relations gimmick: a means, writes Melamed, "to secure US interests, not an end in itself."
This profit motive of neoliberal inclusiveness was perfectly satirized in the Mad Men finale, in which the predatory psychopath Don Draper suddenly gets religion and teaches the whole world to sing in perfect multicultural harmony... while slurping bottles of Coke. Because it's the "real thing," and even black and brown people (or more precisely, their money) are entitled to "snow-white turtle doves."
The Rachel controversy is weirdly reminiscent of the marketing campaign of Coke. Pundits are now arguing about whether trans-racialism is as real a thing as trans-genderism. Which brand is more genuine: Coke or Pepsi? Caitlyn Jenner's photo-shopped Vanity Fair cover, or Rachel's enhanced pigmentation?
Of course, this identity politics controversy conveniently distracts us from paying any more attention to the ugly racist reality of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its embrace of the Malaysian slave trade, or noticing that ugly trans-fat will soon be banned by the most Transparent Administration Ever (TM). So I cynically wonder: are the big factory food conglomerates therefore already salivating to sue us in a secret investor state dispute tribunal somewhere in order to claw back millions in alleged lost profits for being denied the right to poison us with their fatty glop?
Did I mention that Coca-Cola (along with the Grocery Manufacturers lobby) is one of the 600 or so multinationals secretly dictating the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Did I even have to?
Since the oligarchs have "officially" stopped racism over here by allowing a rainbow coalition to buy their various products and propaganda, they pretend that they have the moral authority to impose their will, their bubbly drinks, their corporate tribunals, their power and their poisons to marginalized people all over the borderless One World. When liberals raised on Coke commercials and To Kill a Mockingbird elected our first black president, what more perfect opportunity for the ruling class racketeers to really, totally let loose with the hegemony and the wars and Wall Street-friendly policies that liberals would normally oppose? Barack Obama has been their perfect fig leaf salesman and enabler. As Melamed eloquently writes,
It should not be possible to be antiracist without being against oppression. Yet race-liberal hegemony has been so effective that today in the United States everyone is antiracist, and yet oppression is banal and ubiquitous. We live with it, accepting the idea of racializing no-go zones and new vulnerabilities to premature death for disposable classes; we eat it, consuming bananas harvested by dispossessed Indians in Honduras who work under the threat of gunfire and grapes picked by migrant laborers who are hunted by the same people who enjoy the literal fruits of their labor; we pay for it, supporting militias in Iraq that stake their territorial claims on women's bodies; we study it, publishing research showing that human trafficking (slavery) is more pervasive than ever and that under the current system, blacks will never gain wealth equality with whites -- findings that receive scant hearing and generate less uproar.And just as Rachel Dolezal has blown the shallow cosmetic cover off self-righteous white American liberalism, the #BlackLivesMatter movement has blown the cover right off American "post-racialism." While our ruling class trumpets its domestic inclusiveness and diversity even as it wages wars against the world's dispossessed, the de facto domestic oppression made manifest by mass black incarceration and police brutality in Baltimore, Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island is being laid bare for all the world to see. The moral legitimacy of American militarism and economic global leadership is displaying some unmistakable and long-hidden lethal cracks. The extreme center cannot hold. The insipid "We Are the World" neoliberal theme song is sounding more dissonant with each new war, each new corporate power grab, each new police shooting.
No wonder that Barack Obama viciously called black dissenters in Baltimore a bunch of "thugs" even as he wails about the temporary thwarting of his imperialistic pivot to Asia as encompassed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The spiritual power gained by the ruling class from his election is beginning to wane as he reaches the end of his tenure and an upstart social democrat named Bernie Sanders is exposing the dynastic Bush-Clinton Neoliberal Death Match in uncomfortably high relief.
Rachel Dolezal, meanwhile, has helped to further expose the cosmetic fraud of racial identity politics as sold to and by the liberal class. (Or more accurately, the corporate media are exposing it through their over-the-top coverage of Rachel Dolezal) The only thing that possibly made self-proclaimed liberals in the Age of Obama more uncomfortable was when socially acceptable and safe black TV dad Bill Cosby was exposed as a serial rapist. Because anti-racists have largely relied on media portrayals of successful African-Americans to give them aid and comfort, even as the lives and livelihoods of the vast majority of black and brown people have grown more precarious. It is the very elevation of a very tiny handful of successful blacks that allows us to stigmatize and pathologize huge swathes of what reactionaries are so fond of calling "black culture."
Rachel Dolezal was the perfect stereotype of what the white supremacist system calls an African-American success story: smart, educated, hard-working, safely bound up in corporate academia and party politics, exquisitely coiffed and dressed, and articulate. She was the very model of an acceptable assimilated black feminist. Until she wasn't.
In the space of a nanosecond she went from Clair Huxtable to Lindsay Lohan. She was not the "real thing." And the neoliberal class is not amused as the whole world watches the precarious edifice crumble.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Commentariat Central
Per your requests, here is one of my periodic New York Times comment dumps. You, dear readers, are also invited to share your own comments, whether they be Times entries or not. (On-topic rule does not apply today.)
Peter Baker, The Trans-Pacific Partnership and a President's Legacy, 6/15 (new):
Except for a few token alternate viewpoints (Baker's dismissive "some on the left") to give it a fair and balanced patina, this "news analysis" reads like it came straight from the White House propaganda shop.
President Obama is portrayed as an embattled martyr who only wants to do good in the world as he walks his noble, lonely walk from the Oval to the Situation Room. He doesn't wage wars or launch drones or protect Wall Street so much as he is consumed by them as forces beyond his control. His opponents are spoiling his legacy, poor guy.
Actually, they're not so much against Obama as they are FOR their constituents. They're against an obscene power-grab by multinationals and billionaires. So thank God for Obama's opponents -- activists, labor unions and all manner of people who just want our democracy back.
We're against this deal because it's been negotiated in secret by the same plutocrats it's meant to benefit. Thanks to Wikileaks, we've learned that investor state dispute tribunals would supplant national judiciaries, wreaking potential havoc over such basic human rights as clean food and water, life-saving drugs, and what few financial regulations are still reining them all in. It's a corporate coup on steroids. Otherwise, Obama would share the details.
Meanwhile, Baker couldn't guilt-trip opponents of the TPP any harder if he tried. He might as well be Obama's personal publicist.
How about some real journalism in the public interest for a change?
***
Charles Blow, Jeb Bush and Single Mothers, 6/15:
We have devolved from rule through a representative democracy to rule by the all-too-visible hand of the free market. Why else would politicians refer to children as "investments" expected to yield eventual low-wage dividends for the plutonomy instead of human beings? Children are not pork belly futures. They and their families are human beings deserving of safety and security in the here and now.
The womb fetish of the GOP is bad enough, but the Democrats bear their own share of the blame. It was during the neoliberal Clinton administration that we "ended welfare as we know it" and poor single mothers were forced to work at low-paying jobs, or face loss of cash assistance. Hillary bragged in her first memoir that she and Bill had reduced the welfare rolls by 60% by the time they left office.
Maybe she's evolved since then. But as it is, one in five American children officially lives below the poverty level and one in thirty is literally homeless. Universal preschool and free community college to prepare for a dystopian Uber economy are not going to cut it. Only a guaranteed national income, a government job for everybody who wants one and universal health care will bring this country up to par with the other, more humane Western civilizations. We can take the trillions we spend on endless war and spend it here. It can be done. All we need is a loud enough common voice demanding it.
***
Paul Krugman, Democrats Being Democrats, 6/15:
Campaign speeches and what actually happens after an election are two different animals. We thought we were pulling the lever for liberalism last time around, only to find that we'd elected a slick salesman for Citigroup and the military-surveillance complex. Never again.
To be fair to Hillary, there are more than 500 days till we pull the lever. I'll cut her some slack for now. But what we heard Saturday was pure focus group boilerplate warmed over with sweeping platitudes. The only thing missing was the apple pie.
FDR welcomed their (plutocrats') hatred, while Hillary wants an "economy that works for everybody." I kept waiting for "prosecute Wall Street criminals!," "no to the TPP!" and "let's stop the wars and invest billions or even trillions in government jobs!" but I strained my ears in vain.
But like I said, it's early days yet. Maybe she'll eventually catch up to Bernie Sanders (the real deal) and not only offer detailed policies, like expanding Social Security, but answer some tough questions from a press corps that currently seems more interested in access than affliction.
Again, to be fair to Mrs. Clinton, she did finally answer questions on trade -- but only after pressure from Sanders and others. And her anodyne advice? Listen to Nancy Pelosi (who just needs a bigger fig leaf to get to Yes) and try to improve what is essentially a power grab by global billionaires. How can one improve what one isn't even allowed to see? Sounds mighty "undemocratic" to me.
(note to readers: I'd had every intention of ignoring Clinton's speech because speeches are meaningless and it was the weekend. For some excellent analyses, see Lambert Strether over at Naked Capitalism, plus the "meme" take-down at Vox, as well as the Island of Dr. Hillary scare-o-rama on Truthdig.
***
Kathryn S. Wylde, Yes, Wall Street Needs Help, 6/15:
Trickle-down economics was debunked a long time ago. And Wall Street threatening to leave town if they don't get their way is the oldest excuse in the book. People are fed up with these plutocratic temper tantrums. Maybe if the corrupt financial cartel did leave town, the astronomic housing prices they've spawned will start to come down and people will actually be able to live in New York again. Maybe it will lose its horrific status of Income Disparity Capital of the USA.
The author of this op-ed represents the big bank lobby and is part of the Committee to Save New York propaganda campaign from several years ago, which ran TV ad after TV ad honoring and thanking the corrupt Cuomo administration for its fealty to Wall Street. In 2011, while she served on the Board of the New York Fed, supposedly working in the public interest, she fought against AG Eric Schneiderman's efforts to get relief for the fraudclosure victims of Bank of America. (We all know how that ended. Schneiderman was appointed head of a DOJ financial crime task force, and they forgot to give him an office and a phone. BOA "settled" in one of those sweetheart deals and nobody went to jail except maybe a poor few victims of their liar loans)
Nice try, Ms. Wylde. But I'm not buying the fear you're selling. If you're so broken up over Wall Street's raw deal, maybe we should just follow Elizabeth Warren's advice and break up the banks.
***
Maureen Dowd, Obama's Flickering Greatness, 6/14:
One of the enduring Obama myths is that because he is the anti-schmoozer-in-chief, it automatically follows that he can't break through the "gridlock" (another myth) and get stuff done. This narrative has been spewed ad infinitum by a lazy press corps more invested in accessing the powerful than in afflicting them.
Obama is actually a highly skilled politician. He's been enormously successful in protecting the same corrupt financiers who wrecked our economy by filling his administration with them and theirs. He has enriched the military-surveillance complex beyond their wildest dreams by escalating the old wars and starting some new ones. The TPP he is striving so mightily to jam down our throats is, among other awfulness, an act of aggression against China. He's even sending weapons to Eastern Europe, bringing us dangerously close to war with a nuclear Russia. He's prosecuted more whistle-blowers than any other president. He has his own kill List of drone victims.
Cold antisocial types can absolutely get stuff done. And yet the press corps portrays him either as a loser or as a martyr-hero who just can't catch a break from either the GOP or those nasty backstabbing Dems who took away his TPP toy (probably only temporarily.)
Clintonland-on-Steroids now beckons Obama.
So may our long-lost democracy make a swift comeback. Anti-oligarch Bernie Sanders is looking more appealing by the day.
***
Paul Krugman, Decline and Fall of the Davos Democrats (blogpost), 6/13:
If the TPP is as wonderful as the White House claims, it should release all 800-odd pages of the draft to the public, right now. It's the undemocratic secrecy of the thing, the threat to prosecute Congress members who divulge details of a corporate coup on steroids that is so outrageous.
As Wikileaks reveals, the section about investor tribunals supplanting sovereign judiciaries is so odious that it has been ordered to remain classified for four years, post-ratification. Therefore, the administration's claim that all will be clear and bright once Congress approves fast track is just a bunch of hooey.
By the way, the narrative of "dysfunction" that PK rightly criticizes is blared prominently in today's front page article by Peter Baker and Jennifer Steinhauer. We learn nothing much about the actual TPP, but a lot whole about Obama getting stabbed in the back by dysfunctional Dems; the usual veiled criticism of a shrill Elizabeth Warren sucking up all the oxygen in the room while a calm Obama tries to seduce the fence-sitters; the Davos types belittling Friday's vote as "a nasty little issue," and anonymous White House sources characterizing Nancy Pelosi as borderline-senile.
Journalism in the plutocratic interest trumping journalism in the public interest is on full display in today's paper, unfortunately.
I hope that as the TPP tango plays out, PK will evolve from his lukewarmth and get as hot under the collar about this corporate coup as the rest of us hippies.
***
Paul Krugman, Seriously Bad Ideas, 6/12:
Since their deregulatory policies helped cause the whole mess in the first place, the VSPs aren't about to admit that "mistakes were made." It might cause them to lose track of all that lethally concentrated wealth and power that they keep sucking and sucking from the body politic.
Blair, Osborne, Cameron, Bush, Greenspan, and yes, Obama and the GOP, are carrying on the seriously evil tradition of Reagan and Thatcher, putting the needs of capital above the needs of the citizens of their allegedly democratic governments. This capital is transnational, thus making it both easy and possible for Obama operative Jim Messina to travel across the pond to re-elect another austerian to power. As made painfully clear by the ongoing Congressional food fight over "trade," greed now trumps national sovereignty.
A servile mass media, owned by the same "folks" who own the politicians, makes the metastatic spread of bad ideas possible. (A case in point is Rupert Murdoch's global empire.) Instead of educating the citizens, they turn struggling people against one another. Divide and conquer works every time. Modern-day racism and xenophobia didn't just spring up on their own. They got help from Fox News.
Instead of getting out and talking to the people whose lives they've helped ruin, leaders function as a paranoid sales crew. The only things they have to offer us are fear and endless wars. They call it "progress."
It doesn't have to be this way. We either fight back, or we perish.
***
Anna North, Hire the Next First Lady (blogpost), 6/11:
The continuing attention to the role of first lady is cringe-worthily reminiscent of monarchy worship. We, too, need our queens and princesses, as evidenced by our continuing fascination with royal weddings and royal pregnancies and royal babies and royal maternity/infant fashion.
Does anybody really believe that the presidential spouse functions as anything more than a retro P.R. royal to charm and appease the masses? Like any aristocrat/celebrity, she has a huge staff to perform such odious tasks as invitation-writing, flower-arranging and speech-writing.
And first ladies also act as diversions from unpopular, corrupt administrations. They engage in such heartwarming and attention-getting initiatives as reading, healthy foods and supporting the troops while their hubbies wage their misbegotten wars and shill for job-destroying trade deals. Laura Bush, for one, remained beloved throughout her White House tenure, despite her marriage to a guy whom many have judged to be the worst president ever (though now that he's been out of power awhile, his popularity is starting to strangely rise. So much for the memory skills of the American people.)
The media doesn't help either, with its insipid portrayal of first ladies as mannequins. From Hillary's hairstyles to Michelle's bangs and blowouts, these women do not so much influence as they "stun" and "wow" in their designer clothes.
First ladies, wittingly or not, serve mainly to aid and abet an oligarchic power structure.
Peter Baker, The Trans-Pacific Partnership and a President's Legacy, 6/15 (new):
Except for a few token alternate viewpoints (Baker's dismissive "some on the left") to give it a fair and balanced patina, this "news analysis" reads like it came straight from the White House propaganda shop.
President Obama is portrayed as an embattled martyr who only wants to do good in the world as he walks his noble, lonely walk from the Oval to the Situation Room. He doesn't wage wars or launch drones or protect Wall Street so much as he is consumed by them as forces beyond his control. His opponents are spoiling his legacy, poor guy.
Actually, they're not so much against Obama as they are FOR their constituents. They're against an obscene power-grab by multinationals and billionaires. So thank God for Obama's opponents -- activists, labor unions and all manner of people who just want our democracy back.
We're against this deal because it's been negotiated in secret by the same plutocrats it's meant to benefit. Thanks to Wikileaks, we've learned that investor state dispute tribunals would supplant national judiciaries, wreaking potential havoc over such basic human rights as clean food and water, life-saving drugs, and what few financial regulations are still reining them all in. It's a corporate coup on steroids. Otherwise, Obama would share the details.
Meanwhile, Baker couldn't guilt-trip opponents of the TPP any harder if he tried. He might as well be Obama's personal publicist.
How about some real journalism in the public interest for a change?
***
Charles Blow, Jeb Bush and Single Mothers, 6/15:
We have devolved from rule through a representative democracy to rule by the all-too-visible hand of the free market. Why else would politicians refer to children as "investments" expected to yield eventual low-wage dividends for the plutonomy instead of human beings? Children are not pork belly futures. They and their families are human beings deserving of safety and security in the here and now.
The womb fetish of the GOP is bad enough, but the Democrats bear their own share of the blame. It was during the neoliberal Clinton administration that we "ended welfare as we know it" and poor single mothers were forced to work at low-paying jobs, or face loss of cash assistance. Hillary bragged in her first memoir that she and Bill had reduced the welfare rolls by 60% by the time they left office.
Maybe she's evolved since then. But as it is, one in five American children officially lives below the poverty level and one in thirty is literally homeless. Universal preschool and free community college to prepare for a dystopian Uber economy are not going to cut it. Only a guaranteed national income, a government job for everybody who wants one and universal health care will bring this country up to par with the other, more humane Western civilizations. We can take the trillions we spend on endless war and spend it here. It can be done. All we need is a loud enough common voice demanding it.
***
Paul Krugman, Democrats Being Democrats, 6/15:
Campaign speeches and what actually happens after an election are two different animals. We thought we were pulling the lever for liberalism last time around, only to find that we'd elected a slick salesman for Citigroup and the military-surveillance complex. Never again.
To be fair to Hillary, there are more than 500 days till we pull the lever. I'll cut her some slack for now. But what we heard Saturday was pure focus group boilerplate warmed over with sweeping platitudes. The only thing missing was the apple pie.
FDR welcomed their (plutocrats') hatred, while Hillary wants an "economy that works for everybody." I kept waiting for "prosecute Wall Street criminals!," "no to the TPP!" and "let's stop the wars and invest billions or even trillions in government jobs!" but I strained my ears in vain.
But like I said, it's early days yet. Maybe she'll eventually catch up to Bernie Sanders (the real deal) and not only offer detailed policies, like expanding Social Security, but answer some tough questions from a press corps that currently seems more interested in access than affliction.
Again, to be fair to Mrs. Clinton, she did finally answer questions on trade -- but only after pressure from Sanders and others. And her anodyne advice? Listen to Nancy Pelosi (who just needs a bigger fig leaf to get to Yes) and try to improve what is essentially a power grab by global billionaires. How can one improve what one isn't even allowed to see? Sounds mighty "undemocratic" to me.
(note to readers: I'd had every intention of ignoring Clinton's speech because speeches are meaningless and it was the weekend. For some excellent analyses, see Lambert Strether over at Naked Capitalism, plus the "meme" take-down at Vox, as well as the Island of Dr. Hillary scare-o-rama on Truthdig.
***
Kathryn S. Wylde, Yes, Wall Street Needs Help, 6/15:
Trickle-down economics was debunked a long time ago. And Wall Street threatening to leave town if they don't get their way is the oldest excuse in the book. People are fed up with these plutocratic temper tantrums. Maybe if the corrupt financial cartel did leave town, the astronomic housing prices they've spawned will start to come down and people will actually be able to live in New York again. Maybe it will lose its horrific status of Income Disparity Capital of the USA.
The author of this op-ed represents the big bank lobby and is part of the Committee to Save New York propaganda campaign from several years ago, which ran TV ad after TV ad honoring and thanking the corrupt Cuomo administration for its fealty to Wall Street. In 2011, while she served on the Board of the New York Fed, supposedly working in the public interest, she fought against AG Eric Schneiderman's efforts to get relief for the fraudclosure victims of Bank of America. (We all know how that ended. Schneiderman was appointed head of a DOJ financial crime task force, and they forgot to give him an office and a phone. BOA "settled" in one of those sweetheart deals and nobody went to jail except maybe a poor few victims of their liar loans)
Nice try, Ms. Wylde. But I'm not buying the fear you're selling. If you're so broken up over Wall Street's raw deal, maybe we should just follow Elizabeth Warren's advice and break up the banks.
 |
| "I'm Just Wylde About Fat Cats, and They're Just Wild About Me" |
***
Maureen Dowd, Obama's Flickering Greatness, 6/14:
One of the enduring Obama myths is that because he is the anti-schmoozer-in-chief, it automatically follows that he can't break through the "gridlock" (another myth) and get stuff done. This narrative has been spewed ad infinitum by a lazy press corps more invested in accessing the powerful than in afflicting them.
Obama is actually a highly skilled politician. He's been enormously successful in protecting the same corrupt financiers who wrecked our economy by filling his administration with them and theirs. He has enriched the military-surveillance complex beyond their wildest dreams by escalating the old wars and starting some new ones. The TPP he is striving so mightily to jam down our throats is, among other awfulness, an act of aggression against China. He's even sending weapons to Eastern Europe, bringing us dangerously close to war with a nuclear Russia. He's prosecuted more whistle-blowers than any other president. He has his own kill List of drone victims.
Cold antisocial types can absolutely get stuff done. And yet the press corps portrays him either as a loser or as a martyr-hero who just can't catch a break from either the GOP or those nasty backstabbing Dems who took away his TPP toy (probably only temporarily.)
Clintonland-on-Steroids now beckons Obama.
So may our long-lost democracy make a swift comeback. Anti-oligarch Bernie Sanders is looking more appealing by the day.
***
Paul Krugman, Decline and Fall of the Davos Democrats (blogpost), 6/13:
If the TPP is as wonderful as the White House claims, it should release all 800-odd pages of the draft to the public, right now. It's the undemocratic secrecy of the thing, the threat to prosecute Congress members who divulge details of a corporate coup on steroids that is so outrageous.
As Wikileaks reveals, the section about investor tribunals supplanting sovereign judiciaries is so odious that it has been ordered to remain classified for four years, post-ratification. Therefore, the administration's claim that all will be clear and bright once Congress approves fast track is just a bunch of hooey.
By the way, the narrative of "dysfunction" that PK rightly criticizes is blared prominently in today's front page article by Peter Baker and Jennifer Steinhauer. We learn nothing much about the actual TPP, but a lot whole about Obama getting stabbed in the back by dysfunctional Dems; the usual veiled criticism of a shrill Elizabeth Warren sucking up all the oxygen in the room while a calm Obama tries to seduce the fence-sitters; the Davos types belittling Friday's vote as "a nasty little issue," and anonymous White House sources characterizing Nancy Pelosi as borderline-senile.
Journalism in the plutocratic interest trumping journalism in the public interest is on full display in today's paper, unfortunately.
I hope that as the TPP tango plays out, PK will evolve from his lukewarmth and get as hot under the collar about this corporate coup as the rest of us hippies.
 |
| "I'm Just Lukewarm About Fat Cats...." |
***
Paul Krugman, Seriously Bad Ideas, 6/12:
Since their deregulatory policies helped cause the whole mess in the first place, the VSPs aren't about to admit that "mistakes were made." It might cause them to lose track of all that lethally concentrated wealth and power that they keep sucking and sucking from the body politic.
Blair, Osborne, Cameron, Bush, Greenspan, and yes, Obama and the GOP, are carrying on the seriously evil tradition of Reagan and Thatcher, putting the needs of capital above the needs of the citizens of their allegedly democratic governments. This capital is transnational, thus making it both easy and possible for Obama operative Jim Messina to travel across the pond to re-elect another austerian to power. As made painfully clear by the ongoing Congressional food fight over "trade," greed now trumps national sovereignty.
A servile mass media, owned by the same "folks" who own the politicians, makes the metastatic spread of bad ideas possible. (A case in point is Rupert Murdoch's global empire.) Instead of educating the citizens, they turn struggling people against one another. Divide and conquer works every time. Modern-day racism and xenophobia didn't just spring up on their own. They got help from Fox News.
Instead of getting out and talking to the people whose lives they've helped ruin, leaders function as a paranoid sales crew. The only things they have to offer us are fear and endless wars. They call it "progress."
It doesn't have to be this way. We either fight back, or we perish.
***
Anna North, Hire the Next First Lady (blogpost), 6/11:
The continuing attention to the role of first lady is cringe-worthily reminiscent of monarchy worship. We, too, need our queens and princesses, as evidenced by our continuing fascination with royal weddings and royal pregnancies and royal babies and royal maternity/infant fashion.
Does anybody really believe that the presidential spouse functions as anything more than a retro P.R. royal to charm and appease the masses? Like any aristocrat/celebrity, she has a huge staff to perform such odious tasks as invitation-writing, flower-arranging and speech-writing.
And first ladies also act as diversions from unpopular, corrupt administrations. They engage in such heartwarming and attention-getting initiatives as reading, healthy foods and supporting the troops while their hubbies wage their misbegotten wars and shill for job-destroying trade deals. Laura Bush, for one, remained beloved throughout her White House tenure, despite her marriage to a guy whom many have judged to be the worst president ever (though now that he's been out of power awhile, his popularity is starting to strangely rise. So much for the memory skills of the American people.)
The media doesn't help either, with its insipid portrayal of first ladies as mannequins. From Hillary's hairstyles to Michelle's bangs and blowouts, these women do not so much influence as they "stun" and "wow" in their designer clothes.
First ladies, wittingly or not, serve mainly to aid and abet an oligarchic power structure.
Friday, June 12, 2015
The TPP Tango
For want of a fig leaf, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-.01%) had to find another way to cover herself. So she took to the House floor on Friday afternoon to announce a trial separation from Barack. She really still loves the guy, really wanted to find a way to Yes, but then all of a sudden he was going way too fast for her. It has nothing to do with that slobbery kiss a few years ago in the wake of her advice to "embrace the suck" -- when all she'd really meant was that Democrats should join with the GOP in cutting struggling people off their long-term unemployment benefits to get a budget passed. Awwwkward, yet oh so titillating.
The real awkward moment came on Thursday night, when he showed up, armed security entourage and beer in tow, at her charity insider baseball game, expecting her to fast-track all the way home on the TPP without even touching first base -- which in a functioning democracy, would include the release of its actual contents to the public. He didn't even call first, the cad.
Not to be suspicious of Pelosi's virtue or, god forbid, ethics, but let's be perfectly honest here. She is really hot to consummate the corporate coups disguised as trade deals. But she has simply been unable to catch a privacy break. (also look at her uncivil bringing-up-the rear treatment by Obama at the game, above) Not only were members of her own caucus publicly dissing her for whipping pro-TPP votes behind their backs on a fevered daily basis, but her own constituents back home in San Francisco were beginning to act up. Hanging up on their calls wasn't working. They just began showing up at her office in person, showing all the telltale signs of discontent and opprobrium:
Nancy Pelosi presumably wants to stay in Congress well past her sell-by date. Therefore, after bragging about what a great speaker and leader she's been all these years (regardless of her refusal to impeach war criminal George W. Bush when she had the chance) she regretfully took out her little jar of harmless designer sand and sprinkled it all over Obama's fast-track luge run of dreams. But she and Barack both see this for what it is: a theatrical attempt to retain an outward appearance of democracy and propriety. They and their pals in Congress will be back at their orgy of greed again as early as next week. They just need to provide a slightly larger fig leaf than the weak, separate, cynical Trade Adjustment bribe proffered by the GOP to grease the skids for TPA (fast track). Even paltry displaced worker assistance was voted down by the Dems, partly because it involved robbing Medicare recipients to pay for worker re-training. As Pelosi hinted, restoration of Medicare funds and horsetrading with Republicans over some infrastructure spending might be just the ticket for a smoother trip to TPP paradise for the oligarchs.
The fix is still in. Fig leaves are a dime a bribed dozen, so therefore we progressives must not rest on our laurels. Today's temporary victory is by no means the "stinging defeat" for a cruelly spurned president that the corporate press is making it out to be. A New York Times news analysis* by Jennifer Steinhauer, for example, makes the TPP all about personalities instead of about the actual corporate power-grabs contained therein. To Steinhauer, we have ourselves a breach of etiquette problem instead of a corruption problem. It was neither fear of the electorate nor a new-found moral compass, but the same old Beltway "dysfunction" that caused Democrats to "abandon their president", she says.
Steinhauer snarkily and falsely and centristically concludes,
The Times editors chose wisely when they assigned Jennifer Steinhauer to concoct her Beltway-centric TPP confection. Before her current gig covering Congress, she covered Hollywood. She is also the author of a new recipe book about how to recreate such toxic junk food classics as Twinkies and Sno-balls in your own kitchen.
She gushes, "For Americans of a certain age, memory lane is paved with Ho-Hos."
Just like the paving stones of Pennsylvania Avenue, K Street and Capitol Hill.
Blue Dogs, Devil Dogs, Horn Dogs, Corn Dogs, All-American stadium Hot Dogs -- it's one big happy cash party for all the greed-junkies who are slow-dancing the TPP and trampling the rest of us underfoot in the process.
Wall Street didn't even blink in the wake of the "stinging defeat." Maybe because Friday's vote is in reality a teasing butterfly floating for more bribery dollars?
*Update, 6/13: Sorry to mix metaphors from the above post, but since publication last night, New York Times reporter and Obama publicist Peter Baker horned in on Jennifer Steinhauer's piece in order to bat cleanup, relegating her to second banana in the byline department. Baker rewrote the lede, spinning the narrative in a way most favorable to Obama. His overwrought pathos begins:
Key word: almost. Maybe Jennifer Steinhauer can whip up a batch of Devil Dogs and bring them over to Pelosi as she engages in yet another secretive frenzy of weekend whip counting. The vagueness is a big act. It's how these people flirt and seduce one another.
The real awkward moment came on Thursday night, when he showed up, armed security entourage and beer in tow, at her charity insider baseball game, expecting her to fast-track all the way home on the TPP without even touching first base -- which in a functioning democracy, would include the release of its actual contents to the public. He didn't even call first, the cad.
Not to be suspicious of Pelosi's virtue or, god forbid, ethics, but let's be perfectly honest here. She is really hot to consummate the corporate coups disguised as trade deals. But she has simply been unable to catch a privacy break. (also look at her uncivil bringing-up-the rear treatment by Obama at the game, above) Not only were members of her own caucus publicly dissing her for whipping pro-TPP votes behind their backs on a fevered daily basis, but her own constituents back home in San Francisco were beginning to act up. Hanging up on their calls wasn't working. They just began showing up at her office in person, showing all the telltale signs of discontent and opprobrium:
Nancy Pelosi presumably wants to stay in Congress well past her sell-by date. Therefore, after bragging about what a great speaker and leader she's been all these years (regardless of her refusal to impeach war criminal George W. Bush when she had the chance) she regretfully took out her little jar of harmless designer sand and sprinkled it all over Obama's fast-track luge run of dreams. But she and Barack both see this for what it is: a theatrical attempt to retain an outward appearance of democracy and propriety. They and their pals in Congress will be back at their orgy of greed again as early as next week. They just need to provide a slightly larger fig leaf than the weak, separate, cynical Trade Adjustment bribe proffered by the GOP to grease the skids for TPA (fast track). Even paltry displaced worker assistance was voted down by the Dems, partly because it involved robbing Medicare recipients to pay for worker re-training. As Pelosi hinted, restoration of Medicare funds and horsetrading with Republicans over some infrastructure spending might be just the ticket for a smoother trip to TPP paradise for the oligarchs.
The fix is still in. Fig leaves are a dime a bribed dozen, so therefore we progressives must not rest on our laurels. Today's temporary victory is by no means the "stinging defeat" for a cruelly spurned president that the corporate press is making it out to be. A New York Times news analysis* by Jennifer Steinhauer, for example, makes the TPP all about personalities instead of about the actual corporate power-grabs contained therein. To Steinhauer, we have ourselves a breach of etiquette problem instead of a corruption problem. It was neither fear of the electorate nor a new-found moral compass, but the same old Beltway "dysfunction" that caused Democrats to "abandon their president", she says.
After years of Republican derision of President Obama’s fiscal agenda, which they frequently describe as socialism, in the end it was the president’s own Democratic Party that deprived him of what would have been the largest economic policy victory of his second term.Where do you even begin? Instead of ordinary citizens both here and abroad temporarily dodging the cruel neoliberal bullet (hollow point, because once TPP enters the body politic, it explodes into a thousand little bomblets ripping apart the whole fabric of democracy) we have a multimillionaire politician being stabbed in the back by a twisting Democratic knife. It's all about Obama -- a true hollow man for the ages.
The stunning defeat was the culmination of years of political dysfunction in Washington, with a twist.
After decades of watching presidents secure trade agreements from South Korea to Mexico, even in the face of opposition from their base, Democrats have broadly come to the conclusion that such agreements exacerbate income inequality. They refused to come out in sufficient numbers to help Mr. Obama bring a broad agreement over the line.Steinhauer insinuates that only bitch-slapping Democrats have come to the "conclusion" that trade deals exacerbate income inequality. She doesn't bother to research whether or not this is true. She cares only about the spurned hollow man.
Mr. Obama’s struggle also reflected a longstanding policy of the administration of maintaining a cool distance from Capitol Hill, enraging members of both parties. He delegated most of the arm-twisting to his unpopular trade representative, Michael Froman, thus allowing a populist figure, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, to take up much of the oxygen on the debate. She railed against trade deals on television during the period when the White House was trying to seduce those on the fence.Can there be a mainstream article mentioning Elizabeth Warren without taking the obligatory dig at her? In this episode, we envision Warren greedily sucking up all the oxygen as she "rails" (like a banshee) to torture poor Barry. Slanted journalism like this is how public opinion gets manufactured to side with plutocratic interests. This is the journalism of what Tariq Ali aptly calls "the extreme center."
Steinhauer snarkily and falsely and centristically concludes,
As they return to their home districts for the weekend, Democrats will now have the distinct pleasure of experiencing what Republicans have undergone for the last few years — a narrative of their party in disarray and divided.Huh? With all but 39 House Democrats "spurning" lover boy, the party is hardly divided. It is, however, beginning to lean ever so slightly and gingerly to the left.
The Times editors chose wisely when they assigned Jennifer Steinhauer to concoct her Beltway-centric TPP confection. Before her current gig covering Congress, she covered Hollywood. She is also the author of a new recipe book about how to recreate such toxic junk food classics as Twinkies and Sno-balls in your own kitchen.
 |
| Garbage In, Garbage Out |
She gushes, "For Americans of a certain age, memory lane is paved with Ho-Hos."
Just like the paving stones of Pennsylvania Avenue, K Street and Capitol Hill.
Blue Dogs, Devil Dogs, Horn Dogs, Corn Dogs, All-American stadium Hot Dogs -- it's one big happy cash party for all the greed-junkies who are slow-dancing the TPP and trampling the rest of us underfoot in the process.
Wall Street didn't even blink in the wake of the "stinging defeat." Maybe because Friday's vote is in reality a teasing butterfly floating for more bribery dollars?
*Update, 6/13: Sorry to mix metaphors from the above post, but since publication last night, New York Times reporter and Obama publicist Peter Baker horned in on Jennifer Steinhauer's piece in order to bat cleanup, relegating her to second banana in the byline department. Baker rewrote the lede, spinning the narrative in a way most favorable to Obama. His overwrought pathos begins:
He made it personal. He appealed to their loyalty. He asked them to give him what every modern president has had. He argued the facts, disputed the politics, quarreled over the history and at times lashed out at those who still refused to stand with him.This makes Obama seem like a hero-martyr rather than the hapless knifing victim portrayed by Steinhauer. Baker goes on to repeat the White House excuse that Friday's vote was just another one of those procedural snafus, and that Obama is actually victorious. The vote was belittled as "a nasty little issue" by one of the political operatives in Baker's part of the news analysis. The White House is also quoted as finding Nancy Pelosi "oddly in a mystery zone" -- which, I suppose, is a politically correct way of saying that she's senile. Before voting against all aspects of the trade package, Pelosi is described by Baker as having been "uncharacteristically shaken" and "vague." Baker all but called for an assisted living ambulette for this woman. You almost feel sorry for her.
Key word: almost. Maybe Jennifer Steinhauer can whip up a batch of Devil Dogs and bring them over to Pelosi as she engages in yet another secretive frenzy of weekend whip counting. The vagueness is a big act. It's how these people flirt and seduce one another.
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