I'll Bet You Think This Column's About You

I don’t know if America has a leadership problem; it certainly has a followership problem. Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their institutions. That’s not mostly because our institutions perform much worse than they did in 1925 and 1955, when they were widely trusted. It’s mostly because more people are cynical and like to pretend that they are better than everything else around them. Vanity has more to do with rising distrust than anything else.

Many of the best minds on the internets have already dissected Bobo's latest wankfest. From Atrios to Echidne to Charles Pierce to driftglass.

I'll just post a video for all the little people at their Applebee's salad bars, busy questioning authority.



Other Beesness:









(Cross-posted at Whiskey Fire. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)
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Paul Krugman Attacks Applebee's Salad Bar

At the beginning of last week, the commentariat was in raptures over the Serious, Courageous, Game-Changing Ryan plan. But now that the plan has been exposed as the cruel nonsense it is, what we’re hearing a lot about is the need for more civility in the discourse. President Obama did a bad thing by calling cruel nonsense cruel nonsense; he hurt Republican feelings, and how can we have a deal when the GOP is feeling insulted? What we need is personal outreach; let’s do lunch!
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So what is there to talk about?

What's all this about lunch, now?

*** SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED ***




P.S. What's my point, other than that David Brooks is a very silly person who gets a paycheck for no good reason? I need your recommendations, that's what. I've heard that if one gets enough recommendations, one wins a free set of china, or some such.

Note: Do not recommend Dr. Dick's comment. Although it's a perfectly fine comment (perhaps even a genius comment if I had been the one to post it), Dr. Dick has more china than one can shake a stick at.

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Checking in with Krgthulu

Seeing as the paywall goes up in about 1 1/2 hours, I figured I'd click on over to see what Paul Krugman is up to. (Given that this is probably the only NYT link I'll be clicking, I'm not sure that I'll ever have a paywall issue, anyway.)


Anyways, Paul K. sounds like he's just about had it with Bush's Third Term (or perhaps I'm projecting?):

But the way I see it, Obama adopted Republican framing of the budget debate — including the rhetoric about how families are tightening their belts so the government should too — as early as the 2010 State of the Union, back when Democrats had 59 Senate seats and control of the House.
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So, can we now count on Obama, at least, not to preemptively surrender to the right by proposing Social Security cuts — cuts that we know will be a starting point, not an end to the discussion?

No, we can’t.

UPDATE: General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of "former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress."

After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

Pictured Below: Obama with Job Czar Jeffrey Immelt

Perhaps if you gave Jeffrey Immelt and company another billion dollars, they'd hire some people from this country, Barry? (I'm kidding, please don't take this suggestion!)
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New York Times News

First up, Bill Keller:

Has anyone actually seen James O’Keefe and Julian Assange together? Are we quite sure that the right-wing prankster who brought down the leadership of National Public Radio and the anarchic leaker aren’t split personalities of the same guy — sent by fate to mess with the heads of mainstream journalists?

Sure, one shoots from the left, the other from the right. One deals in genuine (albeit purloined) secrets; the other in “Candid Camera” stunts, most recently posing as a potential donor and entrapping a foolish NPR executive into disclosing his scorn for Republicans and the Tea Party. Assange aims to enlist the media; O’Keefe aims to discredit us. But each, in his own guerrilla way, has sown his share of public doubt about whether the press can be trusted as an impartial bearer of news.

Good grief! Number one, James O'Keefe edited all his videos to take remarks out of context and provide misleading narratives. In spite of having done this with ACORN and with Shirley Sherrod, when he did it again with NPR, the corporate media uncritically passed it along. James O'Keefe is a fraud, but you've repeatedly picked the up the gun he set on the table and shot yourselves in the feet with it.

Number two, you're going to play the victim here and use the term "purloined" to disparage Wikileaks? Think way back. Back into time! Way back when the New York Times had some credibility and didn't uncritically pass along government press releases as the 'news'. Remember the Pentagon Papers? The "purloined" Pentagon Papers?

Some years ago, a colleague tried to sum up the essentials that set us apart from agenda-driven journalists of the right and the left.

The first is that we believe in verification rather than assertion. We put a higher premium on accuracy than on speed or sensation. When we report information, we look hard to see if it stands up to scrutiny. We put our faith in the expensive and sometimes perilous business of witness.

One side of our political spectrum has engaged in class warfare for three decades, and we're buried in debt, entangled in overseas quagmires, and have a society that's reaching levels of income inequality typical of a banana republic as a direct result. Yet the N.Y. Times is going to bring pretend that each side's statements have equal veracity as if every day is a blank slate, and present this as a virtue. Thanks for nothing, Bill. I'm sure it's a coincidence that the owner of the New York Times is a billionaire who inherited his empire, and thus is also a direct beneficiary of this class warfare. (The same is true for the Washington Post, which if anything has shed its reputation even faster than the Times.)

So there is a corollary to this first precept: when we get it wrong, we correct ourselves as quickly and forthrightly as possible. Connoisseurs of penitence find The Times a bottomless source of amusement. (An actual correction: “An article in The Times Magazine last Sunday about Ivana Trump and her spending habits misstated the number of bras she buys. It is two dozen black, two dozen beige and two dozen white, not two thousand of each.”)

At the other end of the culpability scale, I’ve had a few occasions to write mea culpas after we let down our readers in more important ways — including for some reporting before the war in Iraq that should have dug deeper and been more skeptical about the supposed weapons of mass destruction

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Oh, so cute. Sure the NYT eventually canned Judy Miller, but her partner in crime, Michael Gordon, is still there drawing paychecks. As Glenn Greenwald has documented extensively, you are still passing along government spin as God's truth. You have yet to explain why waterboarding is torture when other governments do it, but not when our own does.

This is why you've lost your credibility. You've squandered it yourselves.

Second, I see that Bob Herbert is leaving the New York Times. Why don't you read his column, Bill, and think to yourself, "This is what we should be doing." Your job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. You've gotten it all backwards.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

P.S. H/T to BDR for the Bill Keller link...I've grown accustomed to reading Pauk Krugman and Bob Herbert and nothing else there.
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Letter to the NY Times - Vitriol in Politics

Dear Mr. Brisbane (E-mail: public@nytimes.com)

I am writing to draw your attention to an article in the N.Y. Times on Saturday, "Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics" by Carl Hulse and Kate Zernike.

The authors make the statement, "Not since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 has an event generated as much attention as to whether extremism, antigovernment sentiment and even simple political passion at both ends of the ideological spectrum have created a climate promoting violence."

This is an example of false equivalence. There is one end of the ideological spectrum that has made a fetish of guns and "2nd Amendment solutions" to political disputes, and that end is represented by the G.O.P. The authors mention Sarah Palin's target map, and the Tea Party disruptions at health care Towns Halls in 2009.

There are many more examples the authors could have used. For instance, on November 29, 2010, U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, circulated a PowerPoint presentation to his colleagues in which he compared the Obama administration to the Nazi regime in Germany and likened himself to Gen. George Patton, bragging, "Put anything in my scope and I will shoot it."

Where are the examples of this sort of rhetoric coming from the left? As Paul Krugman wrote yesterday, "Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P."

When you blame everyone, you hold no one accountable. The G.O.P. has gone too far, and they ought to be called to account for their violent rhetoric.
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Matt Bai Lies

"centrist reformers in both parties" - Ha ha, try the veal!


In other words, my job as an NYT propagandist is to help make sure the Democrats don't get crazy and try to use the government to help anyone beyond the richest 1 or 2 percent of Americans. (Not that there was much risk of this happening.)


Let's see: One side has said things like "The tax cuts will pay for themselves", "The Iraq war will pay for itself" and "Reagan proved deficits don't matter", and the other has been right about everything for the last 3 decades. So just the same thing, right Matt?


Matt, you dissembling asshole, Christine Romer estimated that the total stimulus needed was 1.2 - 1.4 trillion. The Obama Administration, as usual, pre-negotiatied that figure down to 800 million, and then (as usual) got played by the Republicans...1/3 of this amount was turned into tax cuts. Tax cuts for the rich have a recent historical record (aka the last three decades) of neither paying for themselves nor creating jobs. Of course you don't tell your readers this, because you are a lying asshole.


Noun
* S: (n) Fically Conservative (as used by Village Propagandists): One who votes for tax cuts for the wealthy, wars for oil and defense company profits, and deregulation that lead to trillions in debt. But they will vote against extending benefits for the jobless when unemployment is at 10%, thus earning tongue baths from the likes of Matt Bai.


The charitable explanation would be that Matt Bai has been asleep, Rip Van Winkle style, for the past two years. But Occam's Razor says he is lying again.


The national debt is near the top of any list of voter concerns at the moment... Which poll shows this, Matt Bai? I'm guessing it includes Tom Friedman's cab driver, David Brooks' Applebees salad bar attendant, the guests at Sally Quinn's last dinner party, and no one else.


Social Security has nothing to do with either the debt or the mission of this commission. The fact that they include cutting it in their shameless report gives the whole game away.

Matt Bai tells lies that advance the interests of America's plutocrat class. George Carlin reported more information in 3 minutes than Matt Bai has (or ever will) in his entire pathetic, scum-sucking lifetime.


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Zombies and the World Wrestling Federation

WWF, because Connecticut's U.S. Senate election features Linda McMahon. The liberal biased New York Times recently posted a hit piece sent by an anonymous McMahon campaign worker about McMahon's opponent, Richard Blumenthal. Obviously, when the NYT has news of something trivial like an Administration illegally spying on its citizens, they hold it until after the election. BUT THIS WAS IMPORTANT!!1one!


Zombies, because ZRM put up some posts and comments that I happened to read in the last few days. On this blog, I am the DECIDER of what is or isn't news.



Soooooooooo...How to link the two? Space Ghost, that's how.



Furthermore, I've learned that the Foo Fighters do not, in fact, Fight Foo. Also.



(Note for Chrome Beach: You can change the youtubers to fit your blog, as well as the other way. I use width="400" height="324" in the embed code.)

In other news, Aunt Snow reminds us that today is Pink Saturday. I'm participating, but not following the rules. Surprised?




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WTF, NYT? / Co-Cobags of the Day

I'm not going to link to this editorial, or waste your time with any quotes from same. Here's an MMfA post that details just how feeble John Yoo's torture memos were.

So New York Times, you get a Co-Cobag of the Day Award. My opinion that the Times is marginally better than the Washington Poop is no longer valid.

Next on our list: Florida Republican Congressman Jeff Miller.


Here's Scott Horton: Silencing the Lawyers.

A total of 779 prisoners have been held in Guantánamo in connection with the war on terror. Five hundred seventy-nine were released, most by the Bush Administration, a quiet recognition of errors made in the decisions to detain them. A large number of those still detained are contesting their imprisonment through habeas corpus—under which the government must make a minimal showing that it has a reasonable basis for holding the prisoner. In roughly three-quarters of these cases so far (36 out of 50 decided), which are being heard before largely Republican-appointed, conservative federal judges in Washington, the court has found that the United States has no reason to hold the prisoner.

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In the late fall of 2001, military operations in Afghanistan were successful, and Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership figures had fled to two last redoubts—the city of Kunduz in the northeast, and the Tora Bora region along the Pakistani frontier. But for reasons known only to him, Vice President Dick Cheney ordered a halt to the bombardment of Kunduz and opened an air corridor to allow the Pakistani military to airlift the Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders out of Kunduz. The maneuver was ridiculed by one U.S. military official present at the time as “Operation Evil Airlift.”

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With that fact now becoming painfully apparent, you’d think that Congress would be calling for an investigation into how original plans for Gitmo were botched—specifically how the Al Qaeda and Taliban figures for whom it was built evaded capture in the face of one of the most powerful military forces ever fielded in Afghanistan.

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Instead, influential Republicans in Congress are crying out for an investigation of the lawyers. Florida Republican Jeff Miller has secured a provision in the current defense appropriations act (PDF) requiring that the Defense Department’s inspector general “conduct an investigation of the conduct and practices of lawyers” who represent clients at Guantánamo if there is some reason to believe that they “interfered with the operations” at Gitmo or “violated any applicable policy of the Department.”

Enjoy your Co-Cobag of the Day Award, Congresscumbag Miller. You've earned it.

P.S. Video for M.B.


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