Glenn Greenwald has written persuasively that the Office of the President is a powerful force in affecting bills that are being debated on Capitol Hill. I have seen the same thing, witness health care: The president was helpless, sat on his hands, as progressive ideas such as Medicare opt-in, Public Option were being discussed. (In fact, he had bargained away a public option before the process even started, but that is off-topic.)
When all that was left was a bad bill, when Public Option was gone, when cost controls were gone, when AHIP and PhRMA had everything they wanted, the president flexed his muscles, threatened, cajoled, bribed …anything and everything to get his bad bill passed.
Obama's search for a family dog finally ended
To those liberals and progressives who are still waiting for his little light to shine from under that bushel basket, please. Accept reality. He’s powerful, he’s interested, but he’s a Blue Dog – a Conservadem. We’ve got ourselves another Clinton.
From Greenwald:
Here’s Politico today on last night’s victory of Blue Dog Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Matheson in Utah over his liberal primary challenger:
He was the beneficiary of late support from Organizing for America, President Barack Obama’s grassroots organization, which used e-mails, text messages, and campaign mailers to urge Democrats pull the lever for the incumbent.
Progressive Claudia Wright falls to an Obama-backed Blue Dog in Utah
Similar to what they did for Blanche Lincoln, the Obama White House unleashed its OFA Army to help protect a Blue Dog incumbent against a progressive challenger. Being able to do that, or not do it, or doing it in the other direction (i.e., to support the primary challenger) sounds to me like some pretty substantial leverage to use over members of Congress.
We are seeing it here in Colorado, where Obama is doing everything he can to support the campaign of Conservadem corporatist Michael Bennet over Andrew Romanoff.
A crudely crafted sign to progressives put up by Emanuel
And this is not new, nor recent. It started on November 8, 2008, with the appointment of conservative Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff. From there we got appointment of Conservadems to fill vacant senate seats (with the exception of Illinois’ Roland Burris, appointed as a slap in the face of Obama by Rod” Blagojevich. Conservadem Tammy Duckworth was slated to take that seat. Burris has been squeezed out now by this supposedly weak and ineffective president.)
Progressives need not apply for work in this administration. That’s all.
Down below I wondered why the frankness about the abundance of natural resources in Afghanistan. As a matter of propriety, we are never told about real objectives of war. (And often we learn later that within power centers there are a myriad of objectives, and even confusion about them. There is just one consistency: They lie, they lie, they lie.)
Jacques Ellul
So I reviewed my text on modern public relations techniques to see if there is a role for truth in propaganda. I vaguely remembered that Goebbels preferred that public pronouncements be true, and that if the truth was not useful, that there simply be silence. That technique is widely used today. Here’s a brief compilation of Ellul’s discussion of the role of truth in propaganda:
The idea that propaganda consists of lies (which makes it harmless and even a little ridiculous in the eyes of the public) is still maintained by some specialists … but it is certainly not so. For a long time propagandists have recognized that lying must be avoided. “In propaganda, truth pays off” – the formula has been increasingly accepted.
Vladimar Lenin, public relations specialist
Lenin proclaimed it. And alongside Hitler’s statement on lying* one must place Goebbels’s insistence that facts to be disseminated must by accurate.
Josef Goebbels, early PR man
How can we explain this contradiction? Ellul says that lies can discredit propaganda, and that “the truth that pays off is in the realm of facts.” Lies pay off as well, but if exposed can be damaging. The essential features of modern public relations are are in the realm of intentions and interpretations.
So we have been told the truth about the existence of vast mineral resources in Afghanistan, resources that the military-industrial complex has likely known of for decades. We could have been told that in the 1980’s, but we weren’t officially there in the 1980’s until Sly Stallone told us about it in Rambo III,. Bush could have told us in 2001, but at that time the American public was so angry that he could have invaded Denmark and it would have succeeded.
John Rambo was our news source for the 1980's war in Afghanistan
A decision was made to share the information with us. The information has been set free, and the press has dutifully reported it and then discarded it. But it has entered the public consciousness.
So the question to ask is this: What interpretation do we give it, and what are the intentions of those who allowed the information to be set free?
¶Everything we do, we do it for them¶
The interpretation is easy: Various media elements have emphasized that these minerals will be a boon for the Afghan people. As resource colonies go, that’s not true. But it feels good to say it.
Intentions? I can only guess, as there is so much that is kept secret from us, but I posit that the information will be used in the future to help the government maintain the fiction that we are there for lofty motives – to help them develop their minerals.
Now Panamanians, Grenadans, Libyans, Palestinians, Vietnamese, Kosovans, Iraqis and residents of Diego Garcia might be screaming at the top of their lungs to the Afghans … Please! Please! Don’t let them “help” you! But the opinions of these people do not matter. The whole of this interesting release of information is intended for domestic consumption.
__________
*The larger the lie, the more believable it is
Clipped from a longer entry by Mathew Koehler over at 4&20: Identical entries from three different sources, all posted within one hour of each other. The third is from a most interesting source:
What public land managers and public land advocates have failed to understand for so many years is that public land is about partnership. Senator Tester gets it. He doesn’t take the myopic view that our forests are just about wilderness, or timber harvest, or recreation. He is working hard to reward partnerships that take a more integrated view of the forest – a forest where you can get a paycheck, ride your snowmobile, and hunt world class elk across vast tracks of roadless land. (June 18, 2010, 12:14 pm)
What public land managers and public land advocates have failed to understand for so many years is that public land is about partnership. Senator Tester gets it. He doesn’t take the myopic view that our forests are just about wilderness, or timber harvest, or recreation. He is working hard to reward partnerships that take a more integrated view of the forest – a forest where you can get a paycheck, ride your snowmobile, and hunt world class elk across vast tracks of roadless land. (June 18, 2010 12:17 PM)
Gabriel Furshong, MWA Forest Jobs and Recreation Act Campaign Director
gfurshong said:
What public land managers and public land advocates have failed to understand for so many years is that public land is about partnership. Senator Tester gets it. He doesn’t take the myopic view that our forests are just about wilderness, or timber harvest, or recreation. He is working hard to reward partnerships that take a more integrated view of the forest – a forest where you can get a paycheck, ride your snowmobile, and hunt world class elk across vast tracks of roadless land. (June 18, 2010, 1:12 pm)
The phrase “Senator Tester gets it” is a little troubling. It has that insipid, hollow PR ring about it, like a paid staffer brainstormed with others to come up with a three or four word phrase that encapsulates the essence of their campaign. Expect to see it elsewhere.
(Other phrases considered and rejected: “I’m lovin’ it”, “But wait! There’s more!,” “It’s all about you,” and “Where’s the beef?” They briefly considered “Keep it wild,” but decided it was trite, and even counter-message.)
Civil libertarians (should that not be all of us?), Democrats and democrats, patriots and citizens of all stripes were rightly enraged that the Bush Administration used its sharp elbows to usurp power and encroach on personal liberty. It made up a new power- to kidnap a foreign citizen, take him anywhere in the world, torture him, and be accountable to no one. (It was done routinely before, but never openly acknowledged. The real usurpation there was to create acceptance of totalitarian behavior by the American public.)
That’s some pretty bad behavior, and there was pushback. In 2004,Bush probably lost the election, but another of his innovations, the paperless and unauditable voting machine, handed him the win. (Oddly, Democrats never offered up resistance to the machines, and the reason is likely that both parties want the power to alter election outcomes at will. The recent Arkansas senatorial primary is … suspicious.)
In 2008, in an oddly clean election, there was overwhelming push back, and Barack Obama assumed office. A new day in America, blah blah blah. And here is the problem with our one-financier-two-parties system: when Bush got out of hand, the partisans of the Democratic Party were enraged. Now that Obama is president, and has invented for himself the right to assassinate an American citizen without trial, without evidence, much less proof of guilt, and you hear …. [chirp].
This is the worst aspect of the Democratic Party – their indifference to the behavior of Democratic presidents. Once a Democrat assumes power, they fall asleep. The president from their party has to be vetted by the same power centers as the other party. He has to pass muster in the corporate media. He has to be glamorous and well-spoken. He has to speak vaguely and carry a small stick.
In other words, as Alexander Cockburn said about Obama long before he was elected, whatever bomb was ticking between his ears had long since been defused. He presented no threat to power.
What we have as a result of this indifference is not a mean old Republican Party and a somewhat good Democratic Party. It is quite the opposite. The Democrats present far more danger to our former Republic. They can get away with things the Republicans cannot. HICPA*, the Health Care Reform Bill, is a Christmas tree for the insurance industry, reinforcing their power over us and profits for them in perpetuity. Could the Republicans have passed such an outrageous insult to intelligence? No way.
I often say that “Democrats are the problem,” but seldom take the time to explain the concept. It is this: We need organized opposition to concentrated power in this country. Democrats assume that mantle, and then do nothing with it. In fact, as with Obama pronouncing the death sentence on American citizens, they often run further and faster than Republicans can.
I am often countered with the notion of “gradualism,” which Martin Luther King called a “tranquilizing drug.” Were it just that, it might be bearable. But it is worse than just a tranquilizer. It is an illusion. There is no gradual progress with Democrats. Concentrated power advances with them in office. It is the opposite of gradualism. It is erosion.
So to those who say that third parties are futile, that we get most of what we want from Democrats, I say nonsense! We do not get less than what we want, we get none of what we want, most of what THEY want, and we are gelded in the process.
I am not a Democrat. I am not a “progressive” if Democrats have usurped that name. I am not a “libertarian,” though I like their independent spirit. I am a NOT. I am waiting for NOT to be a viable alternative. I support all NOT candidates who fight Democrats and Republicans to get on ballots.
But more than that, I support movement politics. The ballot box is a nice illusion, but once elected, if an office holder lacks a support base, nothing happens.
It all starts on the streets and in the neighborhoods. Democrats exist to stop movement politics, to absorb movements and suffocate them with the pillow of gradualism. Democrats are the problem.
___________________
*HICPA = Health Insurance Company Protection Act
The link down below is to a podcast/mp3 by Dan Carlin. Yes, I know no one will go there, and that’s OK. I wouldn’t either. The thing is over an hour long and only suitable for treadmill listening.
The thing that grabbed me about it is that Carlin embraces my whole outlook on the D vs R phenomenon. He says it so much better than me, but takes us back to 1992, and H. Ross Perot. Agree or disagree with Perot, he did one important thing: He showed the nation that the two parties were really in agreement on virtually every important issue. Campaigns were about silly stuff, because the big issues were already settled.
After 1992, the parties got together and vowed “Never again.” The requirements for entry into presidential debates were made so stiff that no one besides one of the two could ever hope to make it in, and more importantly, were flexible, so that if there was a threat of a third party rising, they could simply raise the bar.
And sure enough, in 1996, Perot didn’t qualify for the debates. No one ever has since. Having a third party shatters illusions.
Carlin made another point that has me scratching my head – can it be so? Here’s a hypothetical: Suppose Max Baucus, who hired Liz Fowler of Wellpoint to write the Health Insurance Company Protection Act (HICPA), aka “Health Care Reform”, owned a bunch of stock in Wellpoint. He would be in an insider’s position on that company, and would be able to buy low and short as he pleased based on his inside information.
That should be illegal. Right? It’s not. According to Carlin, citing a Wall Street Journal article, insider trading is perfectly legal for Congresspeople and Senators. There’s a bill that has languished now for four years to make it illegal.
It’s amazing corruption. It is a fouled, dirty, rotten and contaminated system of government. None can join it without being sullied.
“The greatest opportunity in American history to educate the voters by debating the large issues of the campaign failed. The main reason … was the compulsions of the medium. “The nature of both TV and radio discussion programs are compelled to snap question and answer back and forth as if the contestants were adversaries in an intellectual tennis match. Although every experienced newspaperman and inquirer knows that the most thoughtful and responsive answers to any difficult question come after long pause, and that the longer the pause the more illuminating the thought that follows it, nonetheless the electronic media cannot bear to suffer a pause of more than five seconds; a pause of thirty seconds of dead time on the air seems interminable. Thus, snapping their two-and-a-half minute answers back and forth, both candidates could only react for the cameras and the people, they could not “think.” Whenever either candidate found himself touching a thought too large for two-minute exploration, he quickly retreated. Finally, the television-watching voter was left to judge, not on issues explored by thoughtful men, but on the relative capacity of the two candidates to perform under television stress.”(Daniel J. Boorstin)
Thus we entered the age of actor as politician, and politician as rock star.
Like everyone on the outside looking in, I am surprised that Afghanistan has so many natural resources. Up until this time I thought we had attacked the country due to its strategic location and a desire to quash one pipeline and build another.
The question is, why are they telling us this? This is really weird.
In American journalism there is a phenomenon seen now and then called “Now it can be told.” After the fact, after the importance of immediacy has passed, when knowledge of government activity no longer makes a difference, we are sometimes told the truth.
Here is a document written in 1965 by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton – an internal document never meant to be read in public. He’s answering the question asked by many in government: “Why we are in Vietnam?”
70% – To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat. …20% – To keep SVN (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands….10% – to permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
ALSO – To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. NOT – to “help a friend.”
This document is part of the Pentagon Papers, or the real history of Vietnam. It was an internal history of our involvement in Vietnam commissioned by Robert McNamera and meant only for internal use. Daniel Ellsberg, then working for RAND, read the papers and found them so important that he risked his life and freedom to get this truth to us. He almost went to prison over it, and was only saved by an untimely burglary by Nixon. What the Pentagon Papers told us is that never once – never once had the American people ever been told anything true about Vietnam. Beyond just lying was the unavoidable conclusion: Lying was policy. It was natural and accepted. No one questioned it. Except this Ellsberg guy, who they wanted to send to prison.
Ellsberg said recently that he wanted more people like him in the Pentagon to release the truth to the American public. He wondered where they are, why the truth never gets out.
The release of information on the natural resources of Afghanistan might just be an appeal to our imperialist instincts. But it doesn’t fit.
So I am wondering if there is an Ellsberg in the Pentagon. Did someone get hold of some internal documents and release them? Is the press being told now about the true nature of the Afghan conflict because the information is going to come out no matter what?
That’s my guess.
Footnote: The extent and numerous locations for these minerals means that have not recently been “discovered’. Exploration has been ongoing, probably for decades. Was this the reason for the U.S./mujahedeen (aka “Al Qaeda”) expulsion of the Soviets in the 1980’s? Footnote 2: Get ready for paternalism and a new, deep and abiding concern for the people of Afghanistan. Amity Schlaes of Bloomberg has captured the right tone in this op-ed – She says “now those tribes really have something to fight about.” Are you catching the arrogance? They are irrational, fighting over nothing. “We’re rational, they’re not” is the gilded gold coating on the attitude behind “imperial hubris”, one reason among many (another being the bombing and killing) concerning this conundrum that so many great minds have wrestled with: Why do they hate us? Footnote 3: The idea that these resources will actually benefit the people of that country is odd. It’s never happened before with a resource colony. It would be a first.
Carole King and James Taylor are on tour and will be playing at the Pepsi Center in Denver soon. As I read it, the “VIP proceeds” for each concert will be going to the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. This is a Montana environmental group that has steadfastly fought for “NREPA”, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, over the years, never losing sight of that goal, never selling out in backroom deals, never taking Pew money.
AFWR is a loose group without a hierarchy, so loose in fact that they forget to tell the members that their dues are up.
Carole King and Rep Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from upstate New York are friends. Maloney is a steadfast supporter of wilderness and a backer of NREPA in congress. This is the connection that has kept NREPA alive all these years.
I hope that AFWR makes a bundle on the concert tour. They are worthy.
I have been urging my lovely wife for years to watch the 1993 movie Heart and Souls with me. Finally last week she did. As expected, she enjoyed it very much and even found it moving.
The movie features a very young and extremely talented Robert Downey Jr., who plays Thomas Reilly. He is befriended as a young boy by the spirits of four people who happened to be killed in a bus accident at the moment he was born. For unknown reasons, their spirits attach to him, and he spends the first six years of his life with four very real but invisible friends, As if by magnetism, they cannot move more than a few feet from him. He can talk and sing with him, no one else knows they are there.
Little Tommy’s parents begin to suspect he is nuts, and fearing that they may be harming him, the four decide they must go invisible on their young friend. In a heart-rending scene, they bid him good bye. Twenty years later they are still attached to him, but he has long forgotten them. An angel comes by to pick them up, assuming they knew why they had been stuck with Tom. They had no clue – someone in heaven screwed up, so that they did not know they could enter Tom’s body and use him to rectify their lives. They were supposed to use him to do the one thing they most regretted not doing while alive. The reluctant angel gives them more time.
The four ghosts are played by Kyra Segwick, who jilted the love of her life before dying; Tom Sizemore, who stole some valuable stamps from a young boy and was trying to make good when he died; Alfre Woodard, who never got to see her kids grow up, and Charles Grodin, a singer who was afraid to perform in front of people. As the story moves forward, Downey has to play each of the other characters as they “enter” him and do what they must do. He also has to come to grips with his own inability to give love to others, most importantly, a girl named Anne, played by Elizabeth Shue (perhaps the only one in the movie not exactly right for the part. She’s a little cold and distant.)
It’s a schlocky chick flick, predictable and emotional. And I loved every minute of it. It is one of my favorite movies of all time. Make of that what you will.
By the way, the scene of the five lead characters moving in harmony down the street singing “Walk Like a Man” is forever imprinted on my brain. It is beautifully done.
Piece of Mindful 
