There is a company whose name used to be “Blackwater.” It is the ultimate expression of the American way – death merchants. The U.S. military has been turning more towards professional soldiers in the past couple of decades, and Blackwater is a company that hires mercenaries (usually with prior training at government expense) and rents them to the Pentagon.

Blackwater deservedly has an ugly public image as professional killers and looters of the public treasury. It’s founder, Eric Prince, is a rabid fundamentalist Christian who makes death an even more painful experience by lacing it with self-righteousness. The “Blackwater” brand was sullied even further by the publication of Jeremy Scahill’s book by that name.

Blackwater consulted a public relations firm about its image problem and decided to change its name. It is now “Xe.” It’s a good name, as it is unpronounceable and does not lodge in the memory the way “Blackwater”does. In this manner, Blackwater is trying to remove itself from the public mind so it can go on about its bloody business without the shackles of negative publicity.

In other news, James Dobson’s political lobby, Focus on the Family Action, has changed its name to Bglhmp.

That’s not true. I made that up. They are now “CitizenLink.”They are apparently trying to de-link from the Colorado Springs nutbase.

Given all that we have seen from Obama so far, it is amusing that so many Democrats and progressives still imagine that he is hiding his little liberal light under a bushel basket.

Elena Kagen is an unknown quantity, perfect for this bearded right winger. I cannot imagine that she harbors any progressive views, otherwise she would never darken his door. But here we go again – Democrats will defend her, she will be confirmed, and the Supreme Court will move even farther to the right.

It’s a brilliant system. Right wingers, no matter how extreme, have easy access to the court with Democrat support. It was not Bush that gave us Alito and Roberts so much as weaselly Democrats, who could not muster any opposition.

However, when it comes to appointment of a progressive voice to counter the extremists of the right who now run the court, the slightest obstacle, the slightest indication that there will be a fight makes them scurry like cock roaches when the light is turned on.

It is no accident. They are not cowards. They are not weak. They are simply not with us. They run for office masquerading as liberals to prevent liberals from holding office.

Elena Kagen, closet liberal. Yeah. Right. I have said on occasion that one reason to vote for Democrats is that they appoint slightly better judges. Kagen may indeed be better than Alito. We don’t know that. All we can do is hope, and that is all we can ever hope to get from Democrats -maybe, just maybe this person harbors some progressive views.

Don’t bet on it.

Those features of the world outside which have to do with the behavior of other human beings, in so far as that behavior crosses ours, is dependent upon us, or is interesting to us, we call roughly public affairs. The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions. Those pictures which are acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922

The attempted bomb placement in Times Square in New York is an event that invites high skepticism from many angles, and our news media needs to be vigilant and on the lookout for manipulation and deception in the official portrayal of the event.

They are not, of course. They are uniformly worthless, blindly repeating what they are told by authority on high, never voicing doubt about official pronouncements, never offering context.

All that can be said with any assurance is this: A car was left in Times Square. Officials say there was a bomb in it. A suspect has been arrested. A name has been released. At first The New York Police Department said the van appeared to have been left there by a white male in his 40’s. Now that has been abandoned, and the supposed bomber is said to be a Pakistani. Certain groups, using the Internet, have claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing, if it was an attempted bombing.

First, ground-level skepticism: Our leaders have been governing based on fear since around December 7, 1941. Sometime in 1945, any real threats to our security ceased. In the late 1940’s, the U.S. was at war again in China, in 1950 in Korea, and thereafter ensued a “Cold” War which was emblematic of a new National Security State. The fear campaign was a good indication that the U.S. was soon going to start attacking other countries.

Since that time, fear has been the main governing force in our land. People in charge (or perceived as such) must play the fear card or face accusations of being weak on communism drugs terrorism.

In light of a government that relies on fear to hold effective control of public opinion, we must be highly suspicious of events that exacerbate fear, especially bombs that do not go off.

Often times the first official pronouncements on ground level are the most accurate. Later renditions of events often have been injected with official truth, or lies. So if New York police first suspected a white male, my inclination would be to suspect that white male had something to do with the van being left there.

We must also be highly skeptical of claims of responsibility that seep into our news media from foreign sources. A common method of domestic propaganda by our own government is to first plant a story abroad, and then import it. It looks more credible that way. And, any damned fool can have a web site. Imagine how easy it would be for American agents to run a web site and claim to be a foreign “terrorist” group.

But let’s assume that there really was a bomb in the SUV in Times Square, and that it really was fused and ready to go off. Assume that it really was done by a Pakistani and not a 40-year-old white male, and that the Pakistani was connected to a larger group that has claimed responsibility. What is the context?

If you are an American, and you get your news from American sources, then you don’t know squat. Why would a Pakistani try to kill American civilians?

Could it be that the United States has attacked Pakistan and is killing civilians over there?

We are told that the van was parked close to Viacom headquarters, which aired an episode of South Park that 1) accused Tom Cruise of being a “fudge packer”, and 2) portrayed the prophet Mohammad as a voice inside a bear costume.

This could mean that the bomber, if there was a real bomb, could have been employed by Tom Cruise. We should not jump to the wrong conclusion.

This is a sketchy outline on how to watch news: 1) Don’t believe what you are told unless you see it with your own eyes, and 2) don’t believe what you see.

Which brings me back to Lippmann. He was saying something very important, and to which I once alluded in a blog post (A Photo Essay) that turned out to be one of the most widely read (viewed) ever at this site: Our thoughts are managed by images. If you cannot imagine why a Pakistani citizen might be enraged at the United States, it is because you never get to see pictures of his homeland and what our country is doing there.

I often address the matter of thought control, as if such a thing were possible with sentient humans. It is often done with words, but images are far more powerful. That’s why you never see this:

It is thought control that automatically make you doubt the authenticity of this photo. Not that such a thing is possible.

I was going through the ads in the Sunday paper this morning looking for Parade Magazine when I suddenly realized that without Parade, I would take the entire pile of ads and discard them. The magazine, with its easy style of celebrity gossip (and Marilyn vos Savant for those of curious mind) has wide appeal. Its purpose, I now realize, is to get us to search through the pile of ads, where something else might catch our eye.

We have a relative in the advertising business. He works for one of the big ones, and is currently working for Microsoft on the Windows 7 phone. He used to be a little more open about his trade, telling us at one point with that his job was to “get people to change their behavior.” From a start in bike helmets in LA, he’s worked on many national campaigns.

He doesn’t talk shop anymore, but has on occasion alluded to the process of putting together an ad. He is a “creative”, and works one who does copy to come up with short and catchy ads.

(Do you remember one for Ikea Furniture that has a lamp sitting on the curb in the rain? Along comes an old man with a Swedish accent who says “Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you are crazy. It has no feelings. And the new one is much better.” That ad was directed by Spike Jonze of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation fame. It is a simple ad with an embedded message – break your emotional bonds with your old furniture. Don’t be afraid to buy new stuff.)

But before his team gets involved, another department within the agency has already set up a “theme” for the ads, and everything they come up with must advance that theme. No matter how clever or catchy, if it does not toe the line, it is trashed.

(My favorite, Bud Light: Superbowl ads for this product show juvenile humor – refrigerators that spin around to other rooms where young men bow in worship, talking frogs. According to ad critic Susan Linn (who wants children to be protected from advertising), the ads are aimed at young kids 13-16 years old. They are not so much wanting these kids to drink. They are “branding” them, so that when they do come of age they will select Bud Light. It is masterful psychological manipulation of children.)

There exists within each successful ad agency a team of psychologists, or at least of people who are very good at reading humans as we are, and not as we think we are. Advertising must speak to the real person. We buy cars, for example, as an extension of our personalities, and so do not react to the quality of the vehicle, but rather to the image projected by the advertising. Trucks are expressions of masculinity, an important trait for the emasculated American male. For that reason, over the past half century American men have preferred mechanically inferior Chevy trucks over better alternatives. Chevy knows its market. Or did, at one time.

I don’t like advertising because it seeks to manipulate me, to undermine me, to get me to do things by working on my subconscious mind. It invades my private space. I find that invasive and subversive. We now own a DVR, and I skip through the ads, rarely seeing more than a flash version of one. I was amazed to learn that most people who own DVR’s do not skip over ads. They choose! to watch them.

However, there are enough of us avoiding ads that TV show scripts are now being written to incorporate products. Where once they would show a bottle of Advil on the bed stand, now they have to somehow make Advil part of the script. Bad writing is going to get even worse now. The market is working its miracles. (Nothing is new – movies routinely incorporate products into scripts, as Reeses Pieces with ET. It is only going to become more prevalent in the DVR future.)

I suppose someone is going to remind me that without advertising there would be no programming. Have you even seen the crap on TV? We get over a hundred channels, and it is insulting garbage punctuated by mountains of ads. Do I want that to go away? Do I care? Yes, there is some original programming going on, some of it very good. Some of this programming is shown on ad-based networks, but most of it turns up on the Public or subscription channels. Isn’t that’s odd?

Politics, of course, long ago incorporated advertising into campaigns. Political advertising is subversive, just as regular ads are. The real message of the ads are discussed at panel discussions among ad professionals after campaigns are over. But even then they do not talk about the real embedded messages: Political advertising is designed to appeal to hatred, fear and envy.

But that is only the first layer. There is another unspoken layer under that: Political advertising makes you think that your opinion matters.

Your opinion does not matter. Only the the feeling that it matters that matters. Got that?

I received a letter from Senator Jon Tester. He doesn’t write often, but I am glad to hear he is doing well.

Dear Mark,

Yesterday executives from Goldman Sachs testified on Capitol Hill. Last quarter they made a profit of $3.29 billion dollars. At the same time, unemployment rates are nearly 20% in some parts of Montana. It’s time to put an end to the era of ‘profit before people’ firms like Goldman Sachs built on Wall Street.

Jon must have a concrete proposal. That’s great. We could use some non-clay feet in the Senate of the United States.

I asked some tough questions and held these executives’ feet to the fire because I’m absolutely committed to delivering what Montanans are demanding: accountability.

I hope that’s not all he did! Powerful people, after all, are often willing to adopt a submissive posture for the sake of a good picture. They allow people like Tester to grill them knowing that it is only for the cameras, and that the power roles are exactly opposite what they appear to be. It is a good perception management tool.

I voted against the bank and auto bailouts because it wasn’t fair that taxpayers be forced to foot the bill to save corporations that couldn’t survive on their own.

Never forget Bob’s Dole’s maxim: A man will never go wrong voting against something that is going to pass, or for something that is going to fail. It could be those votes were meaningless. Maybe not, but never assume.

Democrats in the Senate are working to make sure not a penny of taxpayer dollars are used to bail out another bank ever again.

Now that is odd! He is saying that what they did was wrong, and they should not have done it. And the bold action he is taking? Never do it again! That is so weak and mealy-mouthed that someone on his staff, whoever does his emails, ought to be fired.

We must end the dangerous era of ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks and financial institutions, implement real oversight on Wall Street, prevent waste and fraud, and stop the massive bonuses executives receive that reward the kind of tactics that got us into trouble in the first place.

Concrete proposals surely to follow. Surely. Someday.

But we can’t do it alone.

It’s past time for Republicans to join us in this effort and bring their ideas to the debate. Twice in as many days the Senate held a vote to begin debating Wall Street Reform, and both times every single Republican has voted against it.

Last I looked, the Democrats had 59 votes. When they wanted to pass a crappy health care bill, they pulled out all the stops, threatened and bribed people and lobbied well into the night. Now they are again sitting on their hands and whining. Maybe I’m missing something here, but we seem to be again in that area of politics where the parties appear to be at each other’s throats, but really working together.

Why in the world we would delay acting to rein in Wall Street after their reckless behavior and greed wrecked our economy?

As I’ve said, there are only two sides in this fight — for the people or for the investment firms and big banks.

Or your writers said that. I forget who. But until I see forceful action, like when you finally got that health care bill passed, I am going to assume that you are merely posturing.

You know where I stand, now the rest of the Senate needs to decide.

It looks like every Senator will get the chance to stand with working families over Wall Street when the Senate votes again. I hope that we can move forward at that time, and finally finish this job.

-Jon

From an evolutionary standpoint, as I read it, some of us are very good at detecting deception. It seems like a no-brainer here. Tester is putting up words that are merely meant to cover the fact that no action is being taken, no force is being used, and all of the persuasive tools that were used to pass that godawful health care bill (am I repeating myself?) are again on the shelf.

It is a false front meant to deceive us. Why is that so hard for Democrats to see?

We are off in the canyons of Utah around Moab. It was my intention not to write anything this week, giving you all a break. But the knee that was surgered is acting up, so I am grounded. I’ll have time on my hands as the others are off wandering.

Nothing much going on in politics. There’s a Kabuki theater around a supposed financial reform bill, with Republicans and one Democratic senator against it, as I read. Oddly, that’s enough! Funny how that works, that. It’s as if they divvy up votes beforehand – as if the leadership of the parties worked together.

They do. The labels – D and R, are mere perception management devices. There are enough right wingers in the Democratic Party to stop good legislation. Theoretically there were enough votes to stop the wars, pass good health care reform, end the tax cuts, close Gitmo – it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

Of course, the interesting thing for me are the psychological aspects, the thought control. It’s like mass hypnosis. With health care, the perception to be sold is that they “got it done.” (“Yes We Did!”) They didn’t, but the leadership of the party will sell it, and the rest of the party will buy in. That’s how groups function, with internal contradictions squashed.

There is no hope for progress on any front via party activities. One cannot change the Democratic Party from within, as the leadership, and the money, is controlled by the conservative wing, which seems to be the majority. And, when candidates do manage to get support from that wing, we have to assume that those candidates are closet conservatives.

That’s why the concept of “gradualism” is a hiding place for losers. The Democratic Party suctions off people who want real change, and renders them useless. Join, disappear and die.

What is the alternative? It’s bleak. With health care, the proper course was to take the massive momentum for reform and channel it at the Democratic Party rather than through it. Reformers were snookered into investing in the party, which duly led them down the garden path.

But how to organize? Door by door, neighborhood by neighborhood, forsaking political leaders. We cannot control legislation in Washington, as the place is corrupt beyond repair.

But, for example, but what if neighborhood activists got together to sponsor free clinics for people to go with ordinary complaints like fevers, wounds and broken bones? They could dredge up volunteer labor, sponsor fund-raisers, charge a membership fee. Most health care, after all, is routine,hardly rocket science.

If an idea is successful, others will copy it. (By the way, if the U.S. health care system was worth a damn, other countries would steal the idea.)

That is a good way to channel energy, locally. It would be real progress in health care. Take that same energy and channel it through Democratic candidates, and you get nothing back but a bumper sticker that says “Yes We Did,” aka perception management.

So the first step in organization is to get people to shed their illusions about party politics. That’s all I do – I continually point out on the blogs that the parties are mirror images of one another in corruption, and that being a Democrat is as wrong as the other alternative.

I will continue to do so. It’s all one person can do from an Internet standpoint. I will join with like-minded people down here IF, and only if, such people are not trying to affect politics on too high a level. It all starts down low.