Master Racing

A NASCAR race is a loud, vaguely violent affair filled with anticipation, excitement, thrills and spills...and it's real loud. Did I mention that it's loud?

Oh yeah, sorry.

Considering my roots, my background and general outlook, a NASCAR race is not my can of gas. I never got it. Why would people spend hours watching cars spinning around an oval, over and over again...to the tune of 500 miles? Crashes, right? No, there is that...but it's more. It's power, strategy, technology and personalities. There is more than a bit of that. The WWF built an empire on personalities...the no-so-subtle soap opera story lines that inspired love and hate among their fans. Racers have some of that. Not scripted, but real. Of the 100,000-plus fans I saw, most aligned themselves with a driver...sporting their colors, their images and waving their flags. Feuds between drivers get played up, and people boo or cheer at cars as they blur by them, leaving only the overwhelming sound of insanely explosive engines echoing in their heads.

The power of the engines dominates you as you watch them propel the cars around the track, sometimes inches away from one another. Many fans listen in on radio communication between drivers and their crews as they jockey for position. There is an intellectual, strategic appeal. The violence of the sport is latent...not as overt as the chariots of Rome...but anticipated at every turn. The violence of flames and flying tires can erupt at any second. It's gripping in every sense. The fans have a blast. They're all on the same page. They drink copious amounts of beer. They whoop it up. Many stay for an entire weekend in a vast field of RVs, campers and tents. It's an event.

It's also very White.

Very White.

The theory I've had for a few years is that it mirrors the rise of "new country." Both took off in the 90s...during the Clinton years and when Black music and Black athletes took over the marketplace. Latinos started to poke through, too. J Lo and the Macarena.

Enter New country and NASCAR, two cultural rest stops on the road to the "urbanization" of all off our entertainment. Two white oases in the midst of a multicultural desert of hip-hop, basketball, salsa dancing...etc.

White suburban kids flocked to the "urban," and their angry White male fathers felt like an endangered species. They took over the political scene in 1994. Remember the Contract with America? They went to Promise Keeper's in the late 90s. Now, they are NASCAR Dads. They support the war and Toby Keith. The are mostly blue collar, suburban and rural. They like cars, and really like trucks. They fish. They voted for Bush...twice.

They are a powerful demographic the GOP has targeted quite successfully...the culmination of years of strategy that started with the Reagan Democrats. These are the guys Dean talked about...the guys with gun racks in their trucks...that the Democrats have simply lost.

At the beginning of the race, after the national anthem was sung...a massive bomber flew over the stadium...low and loudly. People cheered. A prayer..supporting the racers and our military was said. This is the America those of us clinging to the coasts just don't get. And many of us fear.

As for NASCAR...it is a valid sport...an interesting test of man and machine. It's fun to watch...for a while, at least. And there is no overt racism there. There are a few Black spectators, and they were not singled out. But it is as White a crowd as I've ever seen. And they are all one, together and of a mind. And they feel comfortable there, knowing that they are all in it together. They look around and see themselves...a sea of themselves. And it may be a bit enticing for them to think that some people just don't get...and to feel different from the type of people who "don't get it." They probably like that. It differentiates them from society while simultaneously joining them with a distinct, large group identity within it. Let's not start on identity politics, though. Another blog, another time.

It's said that you either get NASCAR or you don't. There is a clean divide between those two camps. Sounds like our red state/blue state country. NASCAR is very red...very white...and it made me feel a little blue.

And Jesus...it was loud!

Harriet Tells All

"As you know, members of the Senate have indicated their intention to seek documents about my service in the White House in order to judge whether to support me. I have been informed repeatedly that in lieu of records, I would be expected to testify about my service in the White House to demonstrate my experience and judicial philosophy. While I believe that my lengthy career provides sufficient evidence for consideration of my nomination, I am convinced the efforts to obtain Executive Branch materials and information will continue."--Harriet Miers' Withdrawal Letter

Yes, conservatives were unhappy with Harriet. Yes, they wanted more evidence of Scalia-esque dogmatism. But the real problem was in the Senate, and the issue there was, as Harriet said, access to documents.

The Bush Administration protects corporations, dividends, cronies...but, more than anything else, they protect information. One of the first things Albert Gonzales...another White House Counsel...did was lock up records from the Reagan-Bush White House. Documents due to be released. And, in so doing, they also locked up documents from Poppy's White House and Bill's Brothel.

What are they hiding?

In the case of Harriet Miers, she was privy to all the big stuff: the famous Presidential Daily Briefing--"Bin Laden determined to attack," the legal gymnastics employed by the White House's Torquemada torture team, the various legal issues around the case for war, the CIA leak scandal and the general traffic of legal justifications that this Presidency is built upon.

She is a fixer...has been since her time in Texas, and those documents she wrote of in her letter cannot be released, period. It could unfix four years of fixing. It could set the bad precedent of actually releasing documents pertaining to Executive decision-making. We can't have information like that flying around a functioning democracy.

It's all part of a pattern...from the Cheney Energy Commission to Judge Roberts' work on Iran-Contra. A panoply of Reagan-Bush people and Bush-Qualyle people were resurrected in this administration--even guys like Poindexter and McFarlane--and one of the benefits of returning to power is that you can use Executive Privilege to mask, obfuscate and, dare I say, cover up your past actions. Your past crimes.

The Bushies even put a lock on the documents relating Clinton's pardons! Remember Mark Rich, the "financier" who, evidence indicates, laundered drug money. Oh, that's why he needed a pardon. Rep. Dan Burton tried to investigate, but the Administration stopped it. Now they've locked up those documents. Why? A "quid pro quo" between golfing buddies?

It all comes down to information, who controls it and what we are allowed to know. We're all on a need to know basis...and, mostly, we don't need to know. Whether it's forged uranium documents or what Poppy knew and did during Iran-Contra, they have some red-hot information and we are not allowed to see it. Our elected representatives are not allowed to see it.

So, Senators looked for Harriet's paper trail, a trail that led back to the highest level of the White House. It's a trail laced with red herrings--stinking fish like Executive Privilege that stymies us as we track down the perps. Harriet saw that she wasn't going to be able to do her job...protecting her teen idol crush W.

Now she's done her job. And we will not see what she's seen. And the media has it's red herring...fish anyone?

Californianistas!

There are plenty of reasons to feel alone here in the WoB. A lone crusader feeling, the "I know things they don't know, or don't want to know" feeling, the "country's problems are so big and I'm so small" feeling, the "so what if I didn't go to an Ivy League school or join a frat" feeling, the "there's a lot of evil in the world" feeling.

Mostly, these are indulgent.

I indulge in them all. Christ, does that make me an alonaholic? Whatever.

The one source of truly oppressive loneliness comes from the mood and temper of the town, the style--or lack thereof--of the social fabric, the repressed mimicry that coats this oh-so-important of cities. Perhaps it's a function of power, or the pursuit of it. Likely it's money, which seems to pursue power like a stalker on meth.

Or maybe it's the transplanted populace, all begging for cues from the core of natives who've been here from day one and have grown used to the social strata, reserved elitism and lamprey economy.

It's not my homeland. In fact, this place makes me feel less like an American than any place I've been.

I'm a Californianista.

Yes, California has it's faults. It's too expensive, a bit too image conscious (I'm from NoCal, not SoCal), too car-oriented. But it's free. Liberated. Open. Anyone can go to California and fit in. Anyone. If they want. Social fluidity--an acceptance of differences and that "laid-back" style that means you are welcome to stay.

There are few places like that in this transcontinental behemoth. Certainly not here. Perhaps I haven't tried hard enough...here, that is. But that's the point. Why should I try?

A fellow Calfornianista seconded my claims. What an oasis. Saying "dude," freely, Saying "whatever" whenever you want. Looking askance at the stuffiness, and being skeptical of anything related to power. You see, the Reagan Revolution's roots come out of a typically Californian, and broadly Western, mindset of individualism, distrust of power and the government and an unrepentant libertarianism.

It has spawned these disparate movements:
The Direct Democracy movement
Early 20th Century Progressives
Berkeley Free Speech Movement
The Tax Revolt (see Reagan)
Skate Punks
Open Homosexuality
Land Rights

Yeah, we have conservatives...but they are not generally Evangelicals. They want the "government off their backs." So do gays who want to marry. They want freedom from interference.

We get along because we have space...we have boundaries. We are united by the space between us. We have fences, we have refugees from the East who were tired of everyone on the block knowing their business, or from the Midwest where small towns post the name of everyone you've slept with in the local diner. I've heard the stories. They came to get away, to re-invent...to get some breathing room. Sure, the air is not so clean...but at least they can breath it freely. Actually, that's LA. LA...well...I'm not from LA.

Whatever!

I've not met many people from home. When I do, which has happened a couple times, there is this thing...a sort of ease and relaxation...that frees me to really be free. To use all the different inflections of "dude" and "whatever." Each word has a number of different meanings. It's great to be able to use them. My brother by choice teaches back in CA...and he assured me he praises his students for using the native tongue. He's helping to keep our language alive.

If there is a lingo here, I haven't found it. Or been introduced to it. Or maybe I'm just not looking. Because this is a place of transients, hostages, jailers and those in transition. I've certainly been three of the four. But now I know I will never be "in" here. Only "out" here...as in temporarily. Last time it was four years. This time?

We'll see.

I do want to get back to my land, my people...my way of life. This time, though, not a retreat from defeat, but as a choice born of desire. And, until then, I will seek out others like me. Perhaps forming a little band of us to roam about, drawing stares from those who find "dude" to be so prol, so gauche...so unsophisticated.

Fair enough.

Californianistas unite! You have nothing to lose but the rest of this country.

Why We Fight

Why we fight. It's an old argument, made time and again, to explain why nations must go to war. Throughout the 20th Century, those in war-making positions have had to do their best to create the circumstances conducive to war, or have extolled the virtues of war, or Cold War, to the washed and unwashed masses they lead. My operating principle on human nature is that we are essentially peaceful, at least collectively.

Individually? Yes, we are often powder kegs looking for a match...or simply stuck in the moment...unreflective, denial-ridden and full of intent. Crimes of passion, right? But it's a different thing to organize a whole population into blind fury and unreflective violence. It takes something big. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler called it the "Big Lie," and he held forth on the effectiveness of that power ploy to mobilize mass society. We, too, as a people are seeing the fruits of lies and the wars they beget. It's why we've spent so much time--finally--on the CIA Leak Probe. We keep reading that it's spread to the case for war. It's always been the central issue...that we bought into the big lie.

We, as Americans, found ourselves in a highly unreflective mood when the case for war was being made. 9-11 will do that. Much like the burning of the Reichstag did in 1930s Germany when it echoed forth a fear of communism and disintegration that led many Germans into the security of Nazi certainties. 9-11 gave us a "them " who hate us--religious zealots and suicidal maniacs. We got Homeland Security and war to assauge or fear. Back then, they got the Fatherland and freedom from Bolshevism.

Here and now, the simple inclusion of Saddam and 9-11 in the same sentence left us wanting...for retribution, for the satiation of unconnected bloodlust and unchanneled vengeance...for an object for our unreflective anger. Perhaps it's time that leads to the sort of reflectiveness that begets a growing investigation, a fall in poll numbers and the disarray many of us now revel in watching. Although many of us are also reflective about the "too little, to late" nature of it all. Alas, we take what we can get.

What will not come out of this is that we had a willingness to believe, to believe the rhetoric of revenge, of anger, of unattributed inadequacies. We lashed out at Iraq because they symbolized something wrong within ourselves. We assisted Saddam all along the way, we invested in him financially, with a host of weaponry, with intelligence. Saddam was Saddam. But Saddam was the Saddam we attacked because of our problems, our deficiencies. But most of us don't reflect on the outcomes of our foreign policy and the way others see us...and he can be made into "the next Hitler" with a little nudge from some amateurish propaganda. He was a great object for unreflective violence. And he had something we wanted. C'mon, we all wanted his oil...even if we needed to console ourselves with songs of freedom and democracy.

And Osama gets away. We never seem to mind to much that the real object goes by, hides away in a cave somewhere. That we keep on missing the point.

But that is the problem we face. We may get to the bottom of this story, but not to the roots causes that will allow it to happen again. Until we look at our denial-based society...a Wal-Mart of cheaply manufactured collective neuroses, pregnant with future possibilities for war-makers and policy-benders...we teeter on the brink of unreflective violence. We could be--collectively--a people at rest, at peace. But we can't depend on the individuals in charge to be reflective, not that way. They are individuals, and there is a good chance they know what they are doing. It's up to us as a people to look at ourselves. Where's the Special Proscecutor for that?

Media Cries Wolf

"Fool me once...shame...shame on...you. A fool me can't be fooled again."
-President George W. Bush

Our media. Can't live with it, can't live without it. Now that they are starting to do their job they're gripped by the impetus to whitewash their complicity in all that's happened since that fateful election night in 2000.

Plamegate's exploding into a full-on scandal about the bogus case for invading Iraq. The poll numbers help. We've just crossed the "more than half of Americans think the war was wrong" threshold. Patrick Fitzgerald's tenacity adds more chum to the water. Iraq is a mess, and it looks like the constitutional vote was jury-rigged. The media cannot avoid looking at the obvious--the Bush Administration misled us into one tragic disaster after another. We've been "manipulated."

"We" being the media.

Aw, poor babies.

Kudos go out to the media for this new focus on the message management, the control of the media, the falsehoods peddled as intelligence, and the overall tendency of this administration to "create" realities that they impose on us and world. Newsweek has a huge piece on "White House manipulation of the media."

Bullshit.

Our media has bent over time and again, beginning with the 2000 vote in Florida. Greg Palast, working for the BBC, found documented evidence of the manipulation of the vote before the fact. Voter rolls were purged of Blacks. Vote counting machines in Black and Democrat districts rejected votes at an astronomically higher rate than predominantly White, Republican areas. He took the story to CBS, they bought he rights...and refused to run it. From that point forward our media has been a willing participant in it's own manipulation.

They turned a blind eye to the link between the Cheney Energy Commission and the California Energy Crisis and, later, the invasion of Iraq.

They turned a blind eye to a laundry list of 9-11 facts. They forgot the "put options," for example.

They gave up on the Anthrax investigation.

They ignored the attempted coup in Venezuela.

They stopped investigating the fall of Aristide in Haiti.

They let the Administration control the torture story...perhaps the most egregious of our recent crimes.

They dropped the Bush/AWOL story, never looked into his DUI--which, it turns out, Harriet Miers fixed-up for him.

They swallowed the Iraq war rationale like a talented hooker. Unlike Monica, they didn't leave anything behind on the dress.

And what about the irradiation of Iraq and our soldiers by the use of Depleted Uranium ammo? Haven't heard much about that, eh?

What makes this "we've been manipulated" plea so Goddamn disgusting is that some of us knew the Iraq case was bogus from day one. The information was out there. But our anchors, reporters, editors and pundits all read from the same script...a script written by the White House, their friends in think tanks and by Fox News. Contrary views and information was out there.

And this is the media that bought into W's scripted press conferences, covered unreflectively W's starring role in the "Mission Accomplished" B-Movie, refused to pursue the fake rescue of Jessica Lynch, and participated in every managed, staged event this White House has concocted. Willingly. Gladly. Like the high-paid sluts they are. And they don't have a childhood of abuse to explain it.

As they look back, they see that they've been scooped...big-time. By Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio, much of the European press...and a horde of alternative news outlets on the internet. They missed the story. In fact, they turned their heads.

Now we have fake conferences with soldiers, a faked Al-Qaeda letter, the faked uranium document...faked, faked, faked. It's simply gotten to the point that they cannot ignore it. Imagine what else has been faked and put through the 24-hour news cycle...littler things, domestic policy things.

But it may be too little, too late. It certainly is for thousands of Iraqis, tortured Afghan farmers, dead American soldiers and, economically, the middle class. Oh, forget about the working and lower classes. Everyone else has.

Because the media let themselves get "fooled" over and over again, the American people and the world will be paying for decades. This vanity-driven focus on "how we've been manipulated," the scoop on how they got scooped, only highlights the problem with our Fourth Estate. Now, it's the "big house" and our media came in from the fields years ago.

That being said...we have to have it and I guess we should just be glad it's happening now. As an historian, I'd at least like to see the judgment of history ascertain that these crypto-fascist bastards were thugs and criminals. That may come out of this scandal.

Better late than never, right?

A Shill or Mockingbird?

Oh, Judith Miller...we hardly know ya.

The CIA leak investigation is finally getting around to the real issues--the manipulation of intelligence, the falsehood of the case made so dramatically to the American people and the complicity of the media in ginning up support for the invasion of Iraq.

Sure, it sucks that Valerie Plame was outed...and it was illegal. But, as potential Man of the Year Patrick Fitzgerald is finding out, the story is much bigger. He's uncovering the tangled web of ops, all run through President Cheney, that got us permanently embedded in Iraq.

An innocent bystander, former Treasury Sec'y Paul O'Neill, naively told us in his book--Iraq was targeted from day one of the Cheney Presidency. A conservative watchdog and all-round thorn in the side of Bill, Judicial Watch, burrowed into the Cheney Energy Commission and found oil execs poring over Iraqi oil field maps with Dick in the aftermath of the California Energy Crisis. Oh yeah, that was before 9-11.

And then there is this document, put out by The Project for a New American Century. On page 14, they call regime change in Iraq an "immediate justification" for building permanent bases in that oil rich land. It was published in 2000. By the way, they write of the need for a new Pearl Harbor on page 51, and of the political usefulness of genotype-specific biological weapons on page 60! Fun stuff!

And Check out their website and peruse the list of signatories. Surprise, surprise...it includes Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby!

What does this have to do with the leak story? Everything.

Cheney and his White House Iraq Group was designed to make the invasion of Iraq unavoidable. They knew Saddam was basically in compliance with UN Resolutions. They knew those aluminum tubes had nothing to do with centrifuges. And the clincher...uranium from Niger...was bogus, bogus, bogus. Although our media isn't paying attention, the CIA and Michael Ledeen are in big trouble in Italy. It was there that the infamous Niger-uranium document was "placed" and filtered up to Langley. The Italians are investigating this big time. Google it if you have a minute.

And we know Cheney was popping into the George H.W. Bush Center for Intelligence, a.k.a. CIA HQ, and demanding proof of Iraq's WMD intentions. They had nothing. Those who said so are now gone...part of former CIA assassin Porter Goss’ housecleaning efforts.

The whole thing was one giant PsyOp. The use of media, false information, opinioneering and scare tactics--and other things I won't get into in this blog--to create enough public opinion to make the invasion happen.

You see, since Kermit Roosevelt used these tactics to overthrow the elected leader of Iran--Mossadegh--in 1953, the CIA got religion...the religion of controlling democracies through propaganda and information manipulation. It's called Operation Mockingbird and it began in the early Fifties under Allen Dulles. We know all about it, thanks to the Church Committee in 1975.

The CIA "turned" journalists and editors at every major news outlet in the country...effectively controlling much of the information we got throughout the Cold War. They manipulated domestic politics, international politics and our perceptions of both. If you really want to now why we don’t know the truth about so many things, investigate this. Read about it...most of what we know comes from their declassified documents. And don't get me started on MKULTRA!

The media was controlled...not totally, but mostly. Supposedly, Operation Mockingbird was "shut down."

Bullshit.

Enter Judith Miller. She was writing article after article in the lead up to the first Gulf War about Saddam being a Hitler-type, his ambitions and his evil-ness.

Funny, Saddam was a CIA asset...but I digress.

Her work even got published into a NY Times book. Hmmm, who was in power then? Oh yeah, many of the people in power now! Like Dick Cheney! Then he was Sec'y of Defense. Did Judy funnel info out to us from that administration, too?

Then, in the lead up to this latest war, she wrote about Saddam's biological and chemical weapons programs in the NY Times, co-authored a book ominously titled "Germs," and became a primary cheerleader at the "liberal" Times for invasion. Of course, all her reporting was false, kinda like Jayson Blair's. But Jayson was silly...not a warmonger. Funny to see who got shafted, isn't it?

Now we see that Miller was intimately intertwined with Cheney's cabal, getting encoded messages from Libby while in jail, refusing to tell what she knew...because it would lead back to Cheney. I will state this emphatically--Judith Miller is another CIA-Mockingbird shill! Period. She's been doing this for over a decade.

Just think of how well they did their job, and how poorly most of us think the media did it's job. At the time of the invasion, over 60% of Americans believed Saddam was part of 9-11! Everyone believed he was a few months away from a nucular[sic] weapon, that we'd be greeted as liberators...and on and on.

They controlled the info creation spigot...at least the main pipes through which the vast majority gets it's conditioned information. C'mon, people...Fox News got daily talking points, Judith Miller, embedded reporters, Ahmed Chalabi, Michael Ledeen, Iraqi maps. And there are others. Look and ye shall find.

So, Judith Miller is a shill. Let's hope Fitzgerald can "kill" this mockingbird and blow open our covert government. We might even get a new Church Committee...God knows we need it.

Kasabian--L.S.F.

A musical interlude to the rants. Check this band out if you haven't already:

Free music video codes by PCPlanets.com

Media Elitism

Joe Six-Pack. Do you know him? Are you that mythic American man? If so, keep in mind that you know or happen to be the quintessential demographic editors, reporters and executives design TV news for. What an honor, right?

Joe Six-Pack sits in every editorial meeting, a ghostly apparition of mediocrity, limited education and thoughtlessness. We decry our nation's limited attention span and under-education. We think news is woefully incomplete, prurient and repetitive. We must blame Joe Six-Pack.

Or not.

The argument made, most often by conservatives, about media elites holds water.

Sort of.

It comes couched in the ideology of anti-Liberalism, but the truth is less clearly defined on the political spectrum. This one populist appeal among a broadly elitist conservative agenda lacks context. The elites that I've encountered here in the WoB, particularly during my first stint, actually lack much of the ideological drive that many say they do. Really, they are much like the elites on the Right...concerned with money, power, influence, weekends in Aspen, on Nantucket or at the Hamptons and their kids' high-priced educations. At the top, the two sides of the ideological spectrum bend and come together...making it more like a top vs. bottom divide than a left vs. right divide.

Their kids go to the same private schools, the same elite universities. They go to the same dinner parties, cocktail parties, charity fundraisers, opera performances and symphony concerts. They are invested in Wall Street, work in the same lobbying firms. And in the media, the upper tier of decision-makers are essentially bottom-line thinkers, worried about their careers, their incomes and what the corporations who own it all think about their ability to appease Joe Six-Pack, to hold his limited attention. Their charge is to sell commercial time while Joe's engrossed in the rapid-fire nonsense that bridges one consumer appeal after another.

The upper echelon of economic conservatives realized a few decades ago that religious conservatives could run a populist image in front of the socially liberal, economically-obsessed Eastern Establishment. Many have tried to understand the merger of these two, seemingly disparate forces. It's symbiotic. Sort of.

We see with Harriet Miers that religious conservatives remain uneasy. Since the end of Reagan-Bush, they've been organizing to control the GOP and force them to keep the faith. But the money is where the real power is. The party's main successes have been financial, not cultural. Deregulation, particularly of the media in 1996, supersedes cultural policies. Think corporate bailouts, tax favors, budgetary pork. The agenda mouthed to religious Six-Packers keeps them on board while William Champagne loots the treasury, drains pension funds and builds tax shelters.

There are occasional victories for religious types. Gay marriage bans, Darwin bans, abstinence programs. These things don't reach to the top, though.

The "Liberal Elite Media" remains their most effective bit of populism. It caused people to question all that they hear, read and see. It conditioned people to tune out everything. If the media does report something of value, it can be up-ended as political. But, more and more, it doesn't really matter. News is passe...Joe likes infotainment. And why not, it's been decided that he can 't understand information.

For those at the top, be they Repub or Dem, they know they'll always be able to afford abortions, to buy the social freedoms they want, to get the educations they want and get the information they want. Elites read the Wall Street Journal. Evolution may fade in the public schools, but not at Andover or Sidwell Friends. Joe Six-Pack can't really understand it anyway.

The most important part of the elite agenda is business. News is business. Edward R. Murrow's "news as public service" is long gone. Corporate influence, country-clubbism and Ivy-Leaguers...that's the context for the media elite. It becomes a disdain for the everyman, a sense of intellectual paternalism and feeling of superiority. We tell them what they can understand.

They understand OJ, Michael Jackson, nightly murders, abducted children, celebrity breakups. They don't get fiscal policy, the national debt, economic globalization, defense contractors gaming the budget, oil companies' profiteering, the California Energy Crisis. They get hot button issues like abortion and gay marriage. They don't get the revolving door between government and lobbying. See a pattern here?

The producer I work with has done TV for decades. He's heard it a dozen times..."We make television for Joe Six-Pack." It makes his skin crawl. We both heard it again. "We need to make this understandable to Joe Six-Pack," and "We need to tell them what we are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what we just told them." With time limited in any broadcast, imagine how little you can tell Joe Six-Pack if you have to repeat everything three times. It's not that the media is dominated by liberals. It's dominated by snobs.

And if Joe Six-Pack does expect a diet of short bites, empty calories and tasteless rumours, it's probably because he's been conditioned to expect it. There was a time, not too long ago, that Murrows and Cronkites gave us news. When news divisions were expected to lose money. Something changed. Bigger and bigger corporations took over. The elitism that comes with money took over the media. People who don't know Joe Six-Pack as anything more than a cabbie, a construction worker or gardener decided to give Joe what they think he can handle. And what he can handle is what he wants. Certainly not the complex truths that cause his standard of living to decline year after year.

At least his beer is still cheap. Just wait for the next commercial, Joe...this Bud's for you.

Are Facts Liberal?

Balance, it's the hobgoblin of media minds.

American journalism and the media engage in continual effort to "balance" stories, to show both sides...to keep everyone happy. "Ping-Pong Journalism," is what a good friend calls it. I saw it daily when I worked at the "most respected hour of news." Mr. Ping says "X," now to you Mr. Pong. Oh, you say "Y." And that's the way it is. X versus Y. We really can't factor out the equation to get an answer. Answers are too political, too subjective. In fact, there are no objective truths, anymore. Isn't that nice and balanced?

What scares many media whores is the idea that they'd be tarred and feathered with the "liberal" epithet. Liberal Media, Liberal Elites...out of step with America, somehow Un-American and obviously unfair.

Of course, you rarely hear the words Conservative Media or Conservative Elites. They are there, though. Corporations are, by and large, conservative...both in style and temperament. They are bottom line thinkers. They want to stay off the radar screen, keep taxes low and policies "sound." Their country-club and boardroom agendas get little play in the media. That's where the conservative bias is felt most.

Take GE, for instance. Our media changed radically after GE bought NBC in the early 80s. GE makes a number of profitable defense products, aircraft engines for military planes and nuclear weaponry stuff. How would those at the top feel about liberal, anti-war, anti-defense spending, anti-nuke reporting? Reporting that might alter the bottom line? GE made a lot of money off the Reagan build-up in the 80s. And they still do...off this little money-maker in Iraq.

Then think about all the big media conglomerates. Basically, five corporations own all the media in this country. Do you think their boards are filled with liberals? Add Fox into the mix...and if you don't think they are conservative, well...you're an idiot. They are. They've been caught getting talking points from the White House. Fox's head cheese, Roger Ailes, was a GOP political fixer and operative. And they've been setting the news media agenda since the end of BlowJobgate. They single-handedly moved the news media away from reporting, taped stories and news-gathering around the world to talking heads and pundits arguing over stories. "We yell, you decide." Facts are not facts, but debate topics.

Fox reporters don't actually break news. The eat it off the wires, vomit it out onto the screen in cute stand ups...and then the debate dogs come out and eat it up again. They, in turn, regurgitate it once more via satellite, mixed this final time with their bile...so you can have a taste.

Post-9/11, the conservative trend was solidified by flags waving, fear of being labeled unpatriotic and by a genuine sense of "we're all in this together." Facts gave way to jingoism and supporting our Commander-in-Chief. In the talking head dominated lead up to the Iraq war, anti-war critics were outnumbered across the media by former generals, pro-war advocates and think tank shills to the tune of 800 to 6.

Really, someone counted 'em all up. Only 6 criticized the planning and machinations leading up to, invasion of and occupation thereafter of Iraq.

What happened to that "liberal media" we've been hearing about for so damn long?

Enter Katrina and Miers and Rove and Libby and Abramoff and Iraq...and on and on. And we're hearing about that liberal media again...those people who are out to get Bush, who jump on every little story to undermine him and destroy his presidency. They are politically motivated.

But where were they over the last five years when all this was developing?

It's only because of Katrina that they finally feel safe reporting facts.

Rove leaked the name to Matthew Cooper of Time. Fact.
Delay and his corruption-laden buddy Abramoff have been indicted. Fact.
Frist pre-emptively sells stock in the family business--HCA--which is also under investigation for Medicare fraud. Facts.
Iraq in civil war. Fact.
Halliburton profiteering off Gitmo, Iraq and the Gulf States. Facts.
The right upset about Miers. Fact.
The facts keep coming.

Just like Bill shooting his wad on the blue dress. Another fact. No dispute there. I doubt his sperm declared a party affiliation upon exiting his urethra...the ejaculation was not political.
Bill lied about sex. Fact.

Let's stop debating facts. And let's stop watching Mr. Ping and Mr. Pong.

There is no counter-point to Rove leaking. He did. It's not liberal to point it out. You can't balance that fact with someone spinning it. "Balance" would be someone having proof that it is not a fact. Everything else is propaganda.

Nor is it liberal to point out any number of criminal acts that are unraveling before our eyes. It's not liberal to call Iraq what it so obviously is...a civil war. A war between competing domestic interests is a civil war. Iraq Sunnis versus Iraqi Shiites equals civil war. That's not liberal, unless Webster's is a leftist dictionary.

You see, the Whore of Babylon's greatest tool, surest instrument of power, is to insert into all things--you and me included--the idea that there is no real truth, that everything is political. Even facts. We hear how politicized America is. We're now so totally divided. The critical thinking skills and judgment of the American people supplanted by the idea, cultivated to full bloom during BlowJobgate, that everyone is motivated by political desires, ideologies and agendas. Of course we are divided, no one can agree on facts anymore.

You are either right or left, liberal or conservative. All reporters, media and politicians, newspapers and radio--all one or the other. Many are. Some are not. But the real issue is that we've moved into a post-journalism democracy, we've seen the rise of Ping-Pong Journalism and the end of "facts" as an end, in and of themselves. Facts are now only a means. Along with it, justice has become passe--it's a means to an end. The same with law.

Everything is relative. Everything a political tool.

But once upon a time, whether it was Watergate or Iran-Contra, facts mattered. There may have been some deep politics going on. Yet, the whole country saw crimes. Saw laws being broken and justice offended. The facts ruled above all else. Reporters chased them down. They reported facts. They did not debate the existence of facts. They did not make their careers off of opinioneering.

Balancing out facts. You can, but the counterpoint to facts are lies, falsehoods and erroneous findings. I guess that's what the media's been doing. Balancing out the facts.

A Trojan Gift Horse

Listen up, Republicans. Harriet Miers is a gift. Here's why.

The 2006 Elections are looming and conservatives are in trouble. Some are downright scared, others angry. The five-year spending spree finally registered with all those heretofore small government hypocrites. The Sharia law-friendly constitution, the details of which are ignored by cha-chinging media whores, inspires nothing short of outrage from Crusading Christians. Katrina and Brownie, Delay and Frist, Rove and Libby...incompetence, corruption and cronyism now have identifiable names. Well, at least people are finally naming names...something that could've started years ago. Alas...too busy being scared and patriotic.

Now, gas prices, housing market jitters and Bush's poll-rating free fall...the stage is set for an axiomatic anti-incumbent mood. Representatives and Senators face an off-year election coated with the tarnish of licking and polishing W's boots since 1999, supporting an increasingly unsupported war and forced to defend their lock-step approach to obviously incompetent marching orders. Will voters take out their wrath on his party regulars?

And then along comes Harriet. Michael Brown as a Supreme Court nominee. A Bush hack. A crony. A living, breathing slap in the face to all those religious conservatives who wanted to put the icing on their Supreme Court cake, top their Justice Sundae with an intellectual cherry. Criticism abounds, nerves quake. Senator Harry Reid slyly endorses her.

Here's the GOP's chance to did something Bill Clinton did time and again with his Democrats. Triangulation.

Remember "the era of big government is over, " the welfare reform legislation, balanced budgets...all those co-opted initiatives that kept him from being lumped in with the Congress?

Triangulation. He staked out positions that would separate him from his supporters while retaining support, and from his detractors while absorbing parts of their message...effectively triangulated away from both side of the debate. Some Dems tried to do the same thing to Bill during BlowjobGate.

Smart Republicans...no, that's not an oxymoron...will use this nominee to distance themselves from their President. Start talking about cronyism, about flawed decision-making, about betrayed trust. It's a pattern, one that is now clearly taking the country in the wrong direction. Go for it, particularly if Karl gets indicted. Sure, he could be like so many incarcerated Mafia Dons sent to prison, calling the shots form his cell. But he won't go to jail--he'd be pardoned--and he will be chastened. At least, he'll be restricted.

Go after spies in the Vice President's office, and AIPAC spies in the Pentagon. Triangulate on Iraq by pointing to the joke that is the constitution and upcoming vote. Stake out a position away from politics-playing Democrats while using some of their plaintive pleas for sanity in the face of exorbitant no-bid contracts, half-ass plans for Middle East democracy and seize upon the bitter irony that President Gas and all-around Saudi pissboy can't pressure oil companies to take in a few billion less in profits. Get populistic.

Christians and evangelicals can stop being used by economic conservatives as their pro-life puppets. Make your case to your base. Tell your zealots that you've been betrayed by a false prophet. No, not based on the amazing idea that God, the "thou shall not kill" father of "love your enemy Jesus" would command W to kill thousands of innocent people in Iraq--that's going too far. No, just tell them that you had faith in this President and this moment and that he blew it. So many are already saying it.

Pile on. Triangulate. Don't look this gift horse in the mouth. Harriet is really there because of her history of protecting business and Bush from the law. Not because she's Jay Sekulow in a skirt.

W's opened the door, walk through it.

You'll save your ass in the upcoming election.

A Bird Flu Over Our Cuckoo's Nest

Is it catching? You know, the idea that we need to eliminate our 127-year old tradition of forbidding the military from acting domestically in law enforcement. The precedent was set in 1878 by the Posse Comitatus Act, and W has been trying get it overturned since 9/11.

It was one of the first lessons he learned from Katrina. He turned away from the destruction with great ease and called on the Congress to consider ending Posse Comitatus. Wasn't it obvious that the only branch of the Federal Government capable to dealing with disasters was the military? Not FEMA, not state or local government.

Although, there is the way the Feds dealt with Florida's three hurricanes during the 2004 election cycle, but that another story.

But just think of how great it would've been to have the US Military ready to go in, lock down and control New Orleans. Well, they kinda did...the National Guard went in. And that's permitted under Posse Comitatus. It's the big boys Bush wants to have ready to go on a moments notice. I mean, just look at how well they are handling the disaster in Iraq!

So, lost in the press conference frenzy over the appointment of his personal legal hack to the Supreme Court...Bush announced that he'd like Congress to repeal Posse Comitatus because of Asian Bird Flu. Yup, you read it right. How's that for out of the blue?

His reasoning is that we could face an epidemic should the Bird Flu migrate here, spread and threaten the American way of life. To stop it, Bush wants to be able to use the military to quarantine whole sections of the nation, placing them under martial law, stopping all travel, etc. You ever seen the movie "Outbreak"? Yes, like that. Unfortunately, I don't think there are many Dustin Hoffmans running around in camouflage, but there are a horde of Donald Sutherlands.

Why now? Well, the Bird Flu has been around for a while. But ABC has been running stories ginning up the fear quotient over the last week-plus. And there is that book about the 1918 Flu Pandemic people seem to be drawn to. Bush even read it. Yeah, he read a book. No kidding.

The epidemic hasn't even started in Asia, not really. But it could. And a meteor could hit us, and nuclear war could start, and a terrorist could release anthrax--oh yeah, that happened already, didn't it?--and on and on. The key is fear. We've been conditioned...by media fear mongering--"tonight, what germs lurk in your grout, or under the crisper in your fridge...is your family in danger?!"-- and child abduction sensationalism, by the Feds using Homeland security to keep us on edge with those fake terror alerts and random warnings, with SARS and dirty bombs out there in our collective consciousness. Fear is the rationale behind W's designs on the military. To use it domestically as a does in Iraq. To restore order. To protect democracy.

If you believe that, well...I have a personally signed copy of Mein Kampf I'd like to sell you.

Freedom or security...you pick.

Implausible Deniability

Plausible deniability. It's the way things get done. Not the pedestrian policy matters that churn through the 24 hour news cycle. It's the events, causes and decisions that make those policies necessary. The things that seem random, inexplicable and, usually, cause us to shake our heads.
Deniability is the grease our covert government uses to run smoothly. It drips from the Bush Family Machine.

Don't do yourself what you can get someone else to do for you...someone two or more layers of personnel away from the actual decision maker. The CIA has run on plausible deniability since it's inception. Revolutions started, leaders assassinated, movements undermined, "negative assets" developed...all using intermediaries. Indigenous agents, interlocutors, agents provocateur. These people, if caught, will not be able to trace the decision back up the food chain to the original source.

In Iran-Contra, the decision makers were barely protected by Ollie North. His gung ho persona was the firewall, the layer of plausible deniabilty, that protected Reagan and Bush. It was sloppy, but Semper Fi-do lept in front of the bullet. What a good little doggy. He got his bone...a senate run and media career on Fox. Reagan and Bush could deny, though, with some plausibility because Ollie was a freelancing right-wingnut, right?

Poppy almost got smacked by Manuel Noreiga. His "there was no quid pro quo" song played on repeat until he could use the military to go in, capture that troublesome asset and lock him away in a Miami jail. Poppy had visited Pineapple Face--as his fellow Panamanians called him--just as our little dictator claimed he had. No layer between the two men. No plausible deniability...plenty of denials, but not plausible.

The deniability game works much like a revolutionary cell. Three people are thrown together by three other people. Each of the three only knows their initial contact and the two other members of the cell. If one or more members of the cell is compromised, the rest of the cell structure is protected. Others can deny they are revolutionaries because the three in the compromised cell can only give away those they know...not the whole organization. The "orders" come from the central cell and are transmitted throughout the structure. The leader is protected.

Intermediaries make it possible to do so many things. Propaganda and true believers are even better. They'll do things they don't realize are contrary to their self-interest....they probably don't know the true objectives...they are tools, or pawns...whatever.

That's why Plamegate is so strange. After months and months of denials, of W's admonitions about getting the leaker and now the uncovering of the sources--Rove and Cheney's right-hand man Libby--it looks like they didn't do a good job of building in plausibility deniability. Judith Miller's odd path to testimony smacks of a cell in collapse, but without the labyrinthine layers of deniability to keep the Prez and the Veep from being caught up in the backlash. It was, by nature, conspiratorial. Maybe Bush didn't know...maybe. But Cheney? The guy who went to the CIA to bully analysts into concocting evidence against Iraq? The hardass who many think of as the real president? Could Libby have coordinated with Rove without Cheney knowing?

So, now we have four guys sitting around a table, a still-smoking gun sitting there. We know who fired it. Do we know who ordered it?

Like Poppy in the Eighties, the arrogance breed by success...of getting away with one crime, one game after another...made them sloppy. Their denials are implausible. The only question left is whether or not anyone has the guts displayed by asset-gone-wrong Noreiga. Miller didn't want to give up her info. Was it more than Libby's words she hid away in jail? Did she talk to Cheney? She's been a shill for them since Gulf War I. Who else was she protecting?

The cell has been compromised. But who gave the order?