Blog Archive: December, 2007

A pretty reliable gauge of Establishment fear is how far away from factual reality its chief spokesmen stray at election time. With economic populism now driving both the Democratic and Republican presidential contests, professional political pontificators in Washington are attacking candidates for being crazed and angry - when in fact their own rhetoric shows it is the pundits who are the angriest of all. An uprising is on - one against the hostile takeover of our government by Big Money interests. And inside the walls of the Washington palace, the elite are freaking out. more »

Joe Klein - who Glenn Greenwald has shown to be one of the most irresponsible journalists in contemporary American history - lays another egg:

"NAFTA has been a wash, creating as many jobs as have been lost."

According to government data, NAFTA has cost America at least 1 million jobs. This is not new information - but it still never ceases to amaze me that a high-paid journalist at any publication is allowed to simply lie without as much as a nod to the actual facts. But then, I guess Joe has neither the time nor the journalistic background to figure out who's right: the desperate bourgeois-pleasing Clintonites whispering in his ear, or the actual hard data that comprise those pesky things called facts.

This New York Times story is very telling about just how tied to Big Money the Republican Party Establishment really is — and how worried that Establishment is about its old tricks being exposed for the fraud they really are: more »

You may have heard by now that the New York Times' contribution to the Great Liberal Media Conspiracy in 2008 will be to hire William Kristol as a columnist.

Fascinating, since just this past October 14 on Fox he said that the Times giving the naming of the third Congressional Medal of Honor winner in the war on terror "about one one-thousandth of the coverage of the Nobel peace prize" was an example of "something sick about our culture." (Actually, the Times would go on to memorialize the posthumous honoree in a nearly three thousand word piece.)

As a friend of mine points out, conservatives should think of this the way Lenin described capitalists: as willing to sell you the rope you use to hang them with.

In the Times, exploiting the house rule that columnists are not subject to correction or editorial control, Kristol will be able to do what he does best—mainline imperialist lies into the public conversation—with the "liberal" Times imprimateur—syndicated, also, in hundreds of smaller papers around the country.

But there's also something in it for the Times. Hiring Kristol reinforces the message that we should reward, not revile, those who were wrong about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction—like the New York Times.

As we turn the page to year 2008 and begin to focus on the elections in earnest, it's probably a good idea to ponder what we've learned of the conservative movement's electoral tactics over the past few cycles. Here's a story on the latest voting rights case to come before the Supreme Court(h/t D-Day): more »

My local paper in Western Mass., the Daily Hampshire Gazette (sub. req'd), today reported on the strain being put upon area food banks.

Food banks across Massachusetts, already hobbled by state and federal budget cuts, are struggling to meet the increasing demands of a faltering economy beset by the mortgage debacle and higher food and energy costs. more »

Big Con friend Greg Anrig, the very best chronicler of the institutional roots of today's conservatives failures, had a good article a couple of weeks ago about the Food and Drug Administration.

Here's the thesis:

Charting the phases of the FDA's decline lays bare the responsibility borne by movement conservatism. more »

Religious right edition...

DALLAS, Texas (CNN) -- If you turn to the Bible -- Isaiah Chapter 35, Verse 8 -- you will see a passage that in part says, "A highway shall be there, and a road, and it shall be called the Highway of Holiness."

Churchgoers in six states have held prayer sessions along the side of Interstate 35.

Now, is it possible that this "highway" mentioned in Chapter 35 is actually Interstate 35 that runs through six U.S. states, from southern Texas to northern Minnesota? Some Christians have faith that is indeed the case.

I'm in Jersey with my in-laws for the holidays, and TV here has been playing a neatly bullying commercial for buttons, magnets, and bumper stickers you can buy reading, "It's OK To Say 'Merry Christmas' To Me!" This particular battlement in the War on the War on Christmas is being manned by the service organization Catholic Daughters of America (or more precisely, as this military supply site specifies, the "Pope John Paul II Court of Catholic Daughters of America"). The commercial caps off the smug sanctimony—those oppressive liberals want to drive Christmas and Christians from the land, but at least you can stand in the gap!-by offering the products in lots of ten.

It's a perfect encapsulation of a certain strain of American conservatism: the discourse through which dominant groups loudly and defiantly announce their own supposed marginalization, then trumpet their own stalwart courage in refusing to be cowed. more »

Two posts down, I wrote about George Bush's little Christmas present to the American people and the Arab world: professional hustler James Glassman, who invented a new genre of "opinion journalism" in which corporations pay to have their opinions represented, and who Bush named to head public diplomacy efforts in the Middle East.

That inspired this comment from one of you loyal readers:

Am I the only one whose threshold for outrage has been raised so high by modern conservatism that I feel the urge to do little more than shrug at this story? Honestly, if Bush started publicly announcing that he had created the Thousand Year Reich and that he was heretofore to be called The Fuhrer, it would just make me shake my head."

I know the feeling.

After all, I didn't even include two of the more damning pieces details about Glassman and the various insults against truth and decency his appointment represents. Today I correct the slight. Merry Christmas!

1) This Glassman, moving into one of the most geostrategically senstive roles imaginable, will not, however, require confirmation from the Senate. That's because, as the AP noted, he's already won confirmation for his current administration job. Which is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. Which is the agency that oversees the Voice of America.

Yes, that's right. This snake oil salesman was already in charge of presenting America's public face to the world.

2) This Glassman, in the work that made his "reputation"—Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market—proved himself either epochally stupid or a world-class liar. There's really no other choice. Paul Krugman explains: appropriately enough, this man who captains America's ship of propaganda maintains, almost literally, that two plus two equals five.

Here's another Christmas tie-in, by the way. I just read off Nexis an article from Variety about the failure of these "public diplomacy" efforts in the Arab world, and learned that, in his new post, Glassman will have a budget of $845 million to play with.

Just by way of comparison, that's about fourteen times the budget afforded the agency charged with making sure your kiddies' Christmas toys aren't tainted with lead.