1 Boring Old Man

FOX is upset that Obama "snubbed" them
AMERICAblog
By John Aravosis
September 21, 2009

Obama snubbed FOX. They’re the only network not to get an interview this weekend. Now they’re angry, and talking about how oppressed they are.

Over the past twenty years of working in politics I’ve learned that you can either control the media or have the media control you. Specifically, when it comes to politicians, and how they should respond to the media when it gets out of control, there are two schools of thought – both are true. The first school is the Democratic school of thought. We simply must be nice to the media, and keep talking to them, regardless of how nasty they are to us, because they’ll be even nastier if we DON’T talk to them. The second, equally true, is that the media needs politicians, and thinks it needs the politicians more than it thinks politicians need the media. Thus, the media will do anything to stop itself from losing access to senior politicians in Washington.

George Bush, the son, was expert at controlling the media because he simply cut their access when they got out of line. I remember hearing from mainstream media sources in DC that their colleagues refused to criticize the Bush administration because the reporter in question couldn’t afford to lose his job. And lose his job he would if he were no longer granted access to the White House and he was a reporter covering the White House… And so it went with George Bush – he had the media eating out of his hands, for a while at least…

FOX News wouldn’t whine near so much about being snubbed by Obama if they didn’t care. They want access. If only to prove that they’re just as good as CNN, or ABC. FOX has always had an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the real news networks. At its core, FOX knows it’s simply a propaganda organ of the GOP, but at its core, FOX kinda sorta wants to be a real news network, albeit a Republican one. So it really gets their goat when they get shut out. Which only means we should be shutting them out more often.

Once upon a time, medical care was simpler. You got sick and went to the doctor. The doctor could treat some illnesses and did. Others couldn’t be treated, and so the doctor delivered the bad news. But then, more and more illnesses could be treated, and that cost more. Since illness is always an unwanted interruption and extra expense, somebody came up with an idea. Why not charge everyone a fixed amount for their medical care every month, then pay for health care from that pool of money when people need treatment. They called it Insurance, but they could’ve called it socialism or collectivism [except the terms weren’t very popular]. And that was fine so long as medical care was "not for profit." But wherever there’s a pot of money, entrepreneurs will not be far behind.

Backed Into A Corner, Boehner Admits That Obama Is Not A Socialist
ThinkProgress
By Amanda Terkel
September 20, 2009

RNC Chairman Michael Steele recently sent out a fundraising letter saying that President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are attempting a “socialist power grab.” Today on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory pressed House Minority Leader John Boehner [R-OH] on whether such language was appropriate. Boehner tried to dodge the question, insisting that “you can call it whatever you want,” but the fact is that Obama’s the one scaring the American public. Gregory continued to ask whether Boehner believes Obama is a socialist, to which he finally admitted he doesn’t:

GREGORY: Do you really think the President is a socialist?
BOEHNER: Listen, when you begin to look at how much they want to grow government, you can call it whatever you want, but the fact is —
GREGORY: What do you call it though?
BOEHNER: This is unsustainable. We’re broke.
GREGORY: That’s fine. Do you think the President is a socialist?
BOEHNER: No!
GREGORY: Okay. Because the head of the Republican Party is calling it that.
BOEHNER: Listen, I didn’t call it that, and I’m not going to call it that.

Boehner is lying. He has said that what Obama and Democratic leaders are doing is socialism. From his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference a few months ago:

Well, the stimulus, the omnibus, the budget — it’s all one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment… All of these bills seek to replace our economic freedom with the whims and mandates of politicians and bureaucrats.

Basically, Boehner admitted today that all he was doing there was fear-mongering and attempting to scare the public for political gain. Today on CNN’s State of the Union, Obama responded to these charges from conservative leaders, stating, “You know, I’m amused. I can’t tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don’t understand why people would call you socialist, in my country, you’d be considered a conservative.”

The worst part of the Health Care debate is that it’s not a Health Care debate. What matters isn’t David Gregory backing Boehner into a corner where he has to admit that calling Obama a Socialist is a scare tactic. The important parts are Boehner’s comments – like "when you begin to look at how much they want to grow government." This is the Republican charge – that this Democratic Administration is specifically motivated by a desire to grow government. In another comment, he says, "This is unsustainable. We’re broke." In saying that, he ignores why we are broke [Bu$hCo], that a large number of Americans have no access to health care, and that health care costs are so out of control that the only way to stop the bleeding is for the government to assume a regulatory role.

There are several reasons that I can’t abide listening to or watching Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, or Bill O’Reilly. Though their styles differ, they all have a contemptuous, self-righteous attitude that I find off-putting. They macerate logical argument [on purpose] and thrive in the domain of loose connections and forced logical fallacy. For example, in the video I posted below, Glenn Beck starts with the Art Deco images on the Rockerfeller Center in New York, and from those images ends up concluding that Obama, NBC, the Progressives, the Rockefellers, and the United Nations are fascists and communists – pseudologica fantastica. So I find myself feeling disgusted, and longing for the olden times when logic and its rules were the currency of political debate – the golden moments of ancient Greece when Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle walked the earth. But it didn’t always go so well for those champions of logic in Greek antiquity either. Socrates, the father of Philosophy, was executed for criticizing his contemporaries. His student Plato, known primarily through his writings, founded the Academy where he taught Aristotle, the great logician [among other things]. Aristotle ended his life in self imposed exile to escape his critics. So much for the idealized past.

Those guys on the top row play logic games and they live and breathe in the negative – attacking others, but never bothering to suggest alternative solutions to the problems on the table. But in all honesty, the main reason I don’t listen to them is that I don’t like their conclusions. And as much as I venerate logic and problem solving, I find myself guilty of making ad hominem attacks on these self-styled media pundits. Limbaugh is an obnoxious, college drop out, DJ who was and maybe still is a drug addict. Glenn Beck has a similar story, an alcoholic dropout who became a top 40 DJ. Hannity is another a college dropout who worked as a contractor and a bartender before getting into radio. O’Reilly is the only educated member of the team, having two Masters Level degrees from Harvard. But he’s vulnerable too, having settled a sexual harassment suit out of court reportedly costing him millions. O’Reilly and Limbaugh share another vulnerability. They’re both obnoxious bullies.

But discounting them because of their foibles is playing on their playing field, and missing the obvious point that they have a wide appeal. The question that needs answering is why – why would anyone listen to them as they make their forced and contemptuous arguments? I suppose the answers are simple. For one, their followers agree with their conclusions. These radio/tv types provide people a logic to go with their felt conclusions. For another, they effectively malign the motives of their victims. Obama isn’t spending to stabilize the economy. He’s spending to give away your stuff to people who don’t earn it. Obama isn’t trying to fix a broken health care system, he’s trying to get you to pay for the health care of ne’r do wells. Obama isn’t trying to help all Americans. He’s a racist trying to help only African-Americans. Obama’s not trying to keep kids in school. He’s trying to indoctrinate them. It just goes on and on. He’s a communist. He’s a socialist. He’s a fascist. He’s a Moslem. He wasn’t born in America. And by casting such a wide net, they tap into the prejudices and fears of a broad segment of people.

Is there anything that Obama [or his supporters] can do about all of this? That’s a preoccupying question for me. Decrying it among ourselves is comforting, but has little impact in the world of talking-point-radio/television. One thing we can do is continuously focus on the cataclysmic failures under the Bush Administration – the wars, the corruption, the debt, the deceit. These pundits talk as if there never was the eight year period of ineptness and deceit that almost destroyed us. Obama approaches it by avoiding the daily fray, treating it as misinformation, and trying to continually keep his messages in the play. Most of us wish he would be more combative, but it’s hard to argue with his intuition. He’s got a hell of a track record. He seems to believe that if he continues to treat his foes respectfully, he’ll hold the day.

I found the Glen Beck video in the last post unimaginable. For reminder, he’s showing carvings on the Rockefeller Center from which he concludes that Rockefeller was a communist and/or a fascist, and that since NBC is in that building, they are too, as are modern Progressives. Oh yeah, Rockefeller donated the land for the UN building which has a Russian Statue of a man turning a sword into a plow – ergo, the UN is communist? I had no idea that Beck was that crazy. It prompted me to find the original red-baiter, Eugene McCarthy, and look at the video of his finale with Joseph Welch. I knew Ann Coulter was a neo-McCarthyite, but I didn’t realize that Beck was too.

Now read Meet the man who changed Glenn Beck’s life…

^{the values voters breakout sessions}

Obviously, these issues are being concretized in a way that’s pretty inflammatory [black and white]. In a discussion elsewhere, I found myself pondering the first – THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. I don’t know much about that. If there’s an agenda, I expect it’s to support homosexual kids and to keep them from being demonized as has been the case forever. I expect that almost anyone who accepts that homosexuality is innate would agree that it is important for gay adolescents to have the freedom to include their sexual orientation in the important task of identity formation instead of leaving it out.

But that’s not what these values voters are talking about. I think they’re talking about their notion of recruitment – that homosexuals want to "recruit" kids into homosexuality. In this scenario, homosexuals are like the vampires in those vampire movies that are in vogue right now – predators out to create a world in their own twisted image. Most of us think that’s a crazy idea [speaking of demonizing]. I certainly think it’s crazy, so I find myself musing about why they think such a thing. Many people interpret this obsessive homophobia as a way of warding off their own repressed homosexual impulses. Others see it as a weak masculine identification.

It has the same sound as the delusional ideas seen in the illness – Schizophrenia. The classic Paranoid Schizophrenic feels persecuted by some group that is trying to change them, to "take away" some essential part of them. Their ideas usually involve the belief that there is a conspiracy group [we call the pseudocommunity] working through some medium [the influence machine]. The motives attributed to the group are uniformly evil [satanic].

Obviously, the mental forces in the mind of Schizophrenic people are not only found there. They’re regularly seen in large groups. In former times, it was witches. More recently Jews, Communists, Moslems, Infidels, Blacks, Whites, Catholics, Christians, etc. have filled the need for a Satanic enemy. In the list above, homosexuals are accompanied by others: Obama, the proponents of Global Warming, the left wing "pseudocommunity." So I question the "repressed homosexual" theory, because almost any group can be engaged in this kind of black and white paranoid thinking.

And it can go both ways. It’s very easy for me [or maybe you] to see these "values voters" in black and white terms – as crazy people with evil intent. It is the nature of human thought to simplify others into black or white, good and evil, friend or foe, like the mono-dimensional characters in action movies – Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, Batman and the Joker, Hopalong Cassidy and the Rustlers. The list is endless.

The only antidote to this destructive trend in human group-think is an encounter with people on the other side – some personal experience that disproves the demonic simplifications. Such things are hard to arrange in the current climate. It’s what Obama was getting at with the "beer in the garden" meeting between Henry Louis Gates and his arresting officer. It’s part of the idea behind integration, insisting on racial encounter to neutralize racism. But the forces working against such encounter are powerful, and, at the moment, have the upper hand. The very emotion that lies underneath all of this fosters "apartness." That emotion is fear…

Notice the list of breakout topics:

They’re all in the negative – anti homosexual, anti ObamaCare, anti Climate Change, anti Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. I thought values were something you stood for. Not something you stood against. But I really appreciate the upgrade. Last year, it was just the Left Wing Conspiracy. Now, it’s the VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY [I guess they know that because they lost the election.]

Former C.I.A. Chiefs Protest Justice Inquiry of Interrogation Methods
New York Times
By Peter Baker
September 18, 2009

Seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency asked President Obama on Friday to shut down the new Justice Department inquiry into past abuses during interrogations of terror suspects, arguing that it “will seriously damage” the nation’s ability to protect itself.

In a letter to Mr. Obama, the former C.I.A. chiefs said the cases now under study have already been examined by career prosecutors who determined no charges were warranted. To reopen cases based on a change in political party controlling the government, they wrote, will make it harder for intelligence officers to take risks without worrying that some future attorney general will investigate them.

“Those men and women who undertake difficult intelligence assignments in the aftermath of an attack such as September 11 must believe there is permanence in the legal rules that govern their actions,” the directors said in their letter.

The directors argued that the new inquiry will result in the disclosure of information about past operations that “can only help Al Qaeda elude” capture and will convince foreign intelligence agencies that they cannot trust America to protect secrets. Moreover, they said the inquiry could expand beyond the handful of cases now under review…

[see emptywheel, Poppy Bush Not Joining Other DCIs Opposing Investigation of W Bush’s Torture]

1. In America, we don’t have a King! It is not the President’s job to direct the DOJ not to pursue justice. We’ve said this over and over. Aren’t you guys listening. Just because Cheney and Bush thought something doesn’t mean it changes our Constitution and Separation of Powers!

2. “Those men and women who undertake difficult intelligence assignments in the aftermath of an attack such as September 11 must believe there is permanence in the legal rules that govern their actions.” That is exactly right, and we do have permanence in legal rules – The Geneva Conventions and USC §2340. They’re easy to find on the Internet. Just read them. Just because Cheney and Bush thought something doesn’t mean it changes our Constitution and Separation of Powers! Just because they got John Yoo to say the rules that applied didn’t apply makes no difference. Any right-thinking Agent knew that those Memos were absolute horse-shit put together to try to evade the law. If the guys couldn’t tell that by reading them, they should’ve looked for another job that didn’t require critical thinking.