Ballin' with The Boss

A big part of being a high profile politician is being a good actor.  You have to be able to say all kinds of absurd things with total sincerity.  The story here is that Obama is good at acting because he practices, and he's athletic and likes sports so they like to cast him in roles in movies like "Ballin' with The Boss."  Naturally, NYT perpetuates the theatre instead of reporting, administering a slobbery tongue bath to the narcissistic asshole they describe. 

He preemptively blames his staff for problems by claiming his superiority to them at their jobs.  So confident!  My favorite part is Obama whining ("in his darker days" ha!) about how he should be judged against the accomplishments of the hypothetical Republican alternative rather than on his own record.  Dude is the exact same as them!  What, he's pissed off that we don't care that Bush didn't even bother to work hard at the acting while basically doing all the same dirt?  Dude pardoned Bush and his accomplices for their crimes and continued and escalated those crimes in between his golf lessons with PGA pros.  NYT focuses on the golf.  Dude got his Grammy and his 2008 Marketer of the Year.  He isn't satisfied with those performance awards and wants voters to give him credit for it too?  Seems kinda greedy, dude.  NYT ignores that Obama can't go all-out against the Republicans because he's complicit in all of their crimes.  So competitive!  Bullshit!  So cooperative.  So compliant.

By the way, here's the plot of Ballin' with The Boss, which won 25 Oscars, 56 Golden Globes and 3 Nobel Peace Prizes.  Once upon a time Obama called in a "double tap" drone strike on a bunch of Pakistani "militants," knowing full well the NYT would comply with his directive that all young men killed will be called militants.  A few minutes later, while he lectured a very special group of underprivileged teens how anything is possible, the first tap killed 9 members of a wedding party. A few minutes after that, the second tap killed 8 would-be rescuers and 16 survivors of the first attack.  A few days later, Obama talked a bunch of shit while slacking off on defense, then demanded the ball on offense, knowing his White House staff league basketball opponents would never risk challenging his drive to the basket.  The one time a brash young intern plays tough defense on Obama, the ref calls a highly questionable foul.  After the game, Obama teammates laud his accomplishments.  He's so smart and talented and his close friend says he tries to do his best!!  The next day the intern is fired. About a decade later, 50% of the long forgotten very special underprivileged audience have been killed or incarcerated in the war on drugs, 90% have received inadequate medical care, and the few who made it to post-secondary education are an average of $79,00 in debt with no job prospects. Meanwhile Obama basks in the luxury and prestige of the post-Presidential speaking circuit, collecting unimaginable speaking fees from all his partners who profit from the destruction of the lives of inconsequential losers.   Obama plays to win!

cringe and then chuckle

I've read almost everything Glenn Greenwald has written since the Unclaimed Territory days.  He's great.  I had to say those nice things because I was starting to complain about something he does every once in a while that makes me cringe.  A throw-away line he used a few days ago was sticking in my craw, something like "the founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves!"  Come on, Glenn! Fuck the founding fathers, man!  They openly sought to design a system to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority!"  They were the original 1%, ruthless exploiters of the working man, and they wanted to keep it that way!  Those rich fucks!  This whole fucking thing! That's what bugs me a little; Greenwald often seems too reverent to the mythology of The Founders, those glorious secular saints who gave us The Holy Document. But then again I refuse to acknowledge other people's sneezes lest I encourage superstition, so maybe I'm overly sensitive. 

Now I see that the piece I'm remembering was shorter than his usual, and the tone more exasperated.  I shouldn't take it especially seriously, and I certainly don't begrudge him the occasional outburst amidst his typically meticulous and methodical work.  In fact, I admit this one is pretty entertaining.  How about that next-day-update where he actually laid down some fucking scripture on us, from the 1777 Epistles of St. John!  (He's the patron saint of the 1% because when he recognized that the dependence caused by extreme inequality compromises the political autonomy of the poor, his solution was that the poor wouldn't have any formal political power in his shiny new democratic nation!)  Anyway, is Glenn making fun of himself?  Either way it is funny, and dark.

the NYT is sounding defensive

The people who got fucked over are happy :)

The kind of people who fucked them over are sad :(

So, everything is okay!

is this meant to be funny?

The NYTimes says, about the debate leading up to bombing the shit out of Libya:

[Clinton and Gates] and other senior officials had to weigh humanitarian values against national interests.

and,

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates acknowledged Sunday that the unrest in Libya did not pose an immediate threat to the United States.... On the key question of whether Libya constituted the kind of vital national interest that would normally justify military intervention, Mr. Gates offered a blunt denial .... “No, I don’t think it’s a vital interest for the United States"

So they had to choose between humanitarian values and a war that wasn't a vital interest. At least not the kind of interest that "normally" would "justify" killing lots of people. The Times seems to think that war is some plucky underdog facing long odds. But, somehow, the cute little underdog always overcomes the big bully of humanitarian values. America loves an underdog!

Hillary explained that Qaddafi has a "history" and might have caused problems, and besides, all our friends in the area (i.e. repressive Arab dictators) wanted us to bomb the shit out of Libya, so we had to help our friends, right? "Let's be fair, here." Bombs away!

The article explains what a great relationship Clinton and Gates have, "practically completing each others' sentences." We're told how Clinton fired Philip Crowley because Crowley said that the military was "mistreating" Bradley Manning by torturing him for months, which apparently Gates, a straight-talker who likes to "call a spade a spade," couldn't handle. On the other hand, "unified message [is] prized by the Obama White House," so maybe BO had a little something to do with it.

The Times assures us "Mrs. Clinton emphasized that the administration did not view the Libya intervention as a precedent." So I'm not the least bit worried that the Libya intervention will be used as a precedent!

"She and Mr. Gates will share the burden of selling the Libya policy at home and abroad." In other words, the leaders go to war regardless of what the people think, and then go around trying to convince a reluctant populace that war is a great idea. That sounds like how Democracy ought to work! Go Democrats!

one less reason to torture him...

Remember how Bradley Manning is getting mindfucked at least in part because they want him to testify against Julian Assange?

Greenwald's excellent offering of the day preemptively establishes that any testimony Manning could give is worthless, since getting Manning to say that Assange asked him for secret documents doesn't make Assange a fucking spy, it makes him a fucking JOURNALIST! Not only that, what Assange did was clearly LESS harmful - by the standards loudly proclaimed by government and journalists alike - than what the NYT did today. And has done a million other times.

So, there's one less reason for them to keep torturing the kid. I'm sure they've got more though.

on Wikileaks

I love it. Duh.

Beyond that, there's lot to say, much of which has already been said. But you must know what I think, so here's a thought.

First, consider that many of these leaked documents are totally mundane and offer no new information about the foreign policy or military policy of the USG. But the fact that such material is classified in the first place DOES reveal something, a point made by Glenn Greenwald:

It is a "scandal" when the Government conceals things it is doing without any legitimate basis for that secrecy. Each and every document that is revealed by WikiLeaks which has been improperly classified -- whether because it's innocuous or because it is designed to hide wrongdoing -- is itself an improper act, a serious abuse of government secrecy powers. Because we're supposed to have an open government -- a democracy -- everything the Government does is presumptively public, and can be legitimately concealed only with compelling justifications. That's not just some lofty, abstract theory; it's central to having anything resembling "consent of the governed."

The alleged social contract is that we the people will allow the government to have insane amounts of power, as long as they let us know what they're doing with it. "Ok, we'll let you keep a few secrets in some special cases where secrecy is appropriate, but generally you need to be telling us what you're up to." Wikileaks come in and proves that the government is making a mockery of that social contract, by making EVERYTHING secret.

If the government isn't respecting the deal, why should we? And aside from what it is that Wikileaks is exposing, the fact that they're in the exposing business is also a problem. Wikileaks is being defiant, refusing to obey as Michael Smith points out, which might make other people less inclined to obey. Power has good reason to be pissed off at Wikileaks.

And so various high profile political and media figures, like good servants of power, are running around saying we should kill the Wikileaks guy. They're the more fringe crazies like Sarah Palin. What about the more "respectable" figures? Consider what Greenwald pointed out and IOZ emphasized about Wolf Blitzer: he was outraged at the idea that the government failed to keep secrets from him! This is a leading "journalist" and he demands that we all should know LESS about what our government does. Or consider that the Attorney General is running around threatening to prosecute foreign citizens, who aren't on US soil, for violating laws that don't exist:

"To the extent there are gaps in our laws... we will move to close those gaps, which is not to say . . . that anybody at this point, because of their citizenship or their residence, is not a target or a subject of an investigation that's ongoing."

This entire Wikileaks episode should reveal very clearly that the people who control the power of Government and of mainstream media have no respect for democracy (i.e. they want an uninformed citizenry) and have no respect for law (i.e. they break it or change it when it serves their interests). The entire power structure of government and media exists to serve certain interests - not yours.

the banality of evil (updated x 2)

How do we spread peace, justice, and sweet freedom to Afghanistan? With "68-ton tanks... propelled by a jet engine and equipped with a 120mm main gun that can destroy a house more than a mile away" of course!

Is this really a good idea? Anonymous officer thinks so!

"The tanks bring awe, shock and firepower," the officer said. "It's pretty significant."

That doesn't sound like a way to win hearts and minds to some people, but anonymous officer knows better, as does his boss:

"Petraeus believes counterinsurgency does not mean just handing out sacks of wheat seed," said a senior officer in Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency "doesn't mean you don't blow up stuff or kill people who need to be killed."

Let's talk about blowing up stuff and killing people. The silly people who's stuff is getting blown up wonder why their stuff is getting blown up, and don't seem to like it.

"Why do you have to blow up so many of our fields and homes?" a farmer from the Arghandab district asked a top NATO general at a recent community meeting.

And we understand farmer's point. But farmer doesn't seem to understand the way anonymous officer does! See, when we blow up farmer's fields and homes, that is a good thing for farmer, because he gets the privilege of filing a complaint!

Although military officials are apologetic in public, they maintain privately that the tactic has a benefit beyond the elimination of insurgent bombs. By making people travel to the district governor's office to submit a claim for damaged property, "in effect, you're connecting the government to the people," the senior officer said.

Maybe we should start blowing stuff up everywhere that the government isn't connected to the people! The people's stuff, of course. Not the government.

So, who are these people that "need to be killed"? And doesn't this all sound a bit desperate?

Although the officer acknowledged that the use of tanks this many years into the war could be seen as a sign of desperation by some Afghans and Americans, he said they will provide the Marines with an important new tool in missions to flush out pockets of insurgent fighters.

"Pockets of insurgent fighters" are who must be "flushed out." In other words, anyone who doesn't like foreign armies blowing up their fields and homes and slaughtering their family needs to be killed. Why?

...to protect Afghan civilians from insurgents.

Has anyone asked these Afghan civilians what they think? If they want more 68 ton tanks? If they want Petraeus or anonymous officer in their backyard? Of course not. Why ask them when we could just talk to anonymous officer?

Anyway, you might be wondering how Petraeus can get away with this, yet alone live with himself. Don't worry, he's doing just fine!

"Because Petraeus is the author of the COIN [counterinsurgency] manual, he can do whatever he wants. He can manage the optics better than McChrystal could," the adviser said. "If he wants to turn it up to 11, he feels he has the moral authority to do it."

He can get away with anything and feels morally justified because he wrote a book about how to kill people, and because he can manage optics. I'm pretty sure that "optics" means The Washington Post.

Update: Arthur Silber comments on the same article, including a genuine compliment to its author for his fairly straightforward depiction of the evil under discussion. Arthur's entire essay, as always, is well worth reading.

Update 2: Yeah, the more I think about it, "optics" means US domestic media - TV networks, local papers - more than the Washington Post. This comment seems right to me.

the wonders of pillage

way to completely ignore the moral argument, journal of wall street!

"isn't it amazing how much variety we have!!"

uh, yeah, and the cost of that variety is borne by peasants in mexico, slaving away in factories because a huge US corporation stole their land to grow cheap ass avocados, and those who will inherit our broken ecosystems, raped to death by monoculture and waste from the transport systems to bring you your fucking avocado to manhattan in february. such people have no power, and certainly don't read the WSJ. no need to consider their perspectives.

Greenwald on accountability

Greenwald today (emphasis mine):

That Jeffrey Goldberg of all people is the reporter to whom we turn to understand the contours of the Iran debate would be comical if it weren't so troubling, and it illustrates the broader shield from accountability with which political and media elites have vested themselves.

...

Goldberg is still treated as credible and influential despite his unrepentant Iraq falsehoods because the people who determine credibility and influence did essentially the same thing he did, and are thus incentivized to maintain a Look Forward, Not Backward amnesia, ensuring that nobody pays a price for anything that happened (see, as but one example, Slate's Fred Kaplan -- who was also spectacularly wrong in his Iraq-war-enabling reporting -- gushing this week about Goldberg's brilliance: "the best article I've read on the subject -- shrewd and balanced reporting combined with sophisticated analysis of the tangled strategic dilemmas."). Meanwhile, Goldberg's colleague publicly demands that nobody hold Goldberg's past transgressions against him. No profession is more accountability-free than establishment journalism.

Greenwald last month (emphasis mine again):

With the Nasr firing, here we find yet again exposed the central lie of American establishment journalism: that opinion-free "objectivity" is possible, required, and the governing rule. The exact opposite is true: very strong opinions are not only permitted but required. They just have to be the right opinions: the official, approved ones.

It simply isn't true that establishment journalism is accountability-free. It is true that establishment journalists are not accountable to the truth, nor to the public (though they might purport to be). But they are accountable to power, as Octavia Nasr and Ashleigh Banfield and Eason Jordan and Phil Donahue, among others, well know. Thus, nobody is held accountable for the disaster of the Iraq war because the Iraq war wasn't a disaster to the powerful! Further, people are rewarded for their contributions to the Iraq war because the Iraq war was good for the powerful!

I'm sure Glenn knows this because he documented it quite well in the 2nd linked piece, but I feel like his piece today suffers for not explicitly making the connection.

NYT sucks

the nyt is a hideous pile of shit.

the entire thing is just copying down what anonymous government officials say and printing it. they give it the title "evidence mounts for taliban role in car bomb plot" when no evidence whatsoever is produced.

plus you get shit like this:

There is no doubt among intelligence officials that the barrage of attacks by C.I.A. drones over the past year has made Pakistan’s Taliban, which goes by the name Tehrik-i-Taliban, increasingly determined to seek revenge by finding any way possible to strike at the United States.

The C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan, which was accelerated in 2008 and expanded by President Obama last year, has enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Washington in part because it was perceived as eliminating dangerous militants while keeping Americans safe.

But the attack in December on a C.I.A. base in Afghanistan, and now possibly the failed S.U.V. attack in Manhattan, are reminders that the drones’ very success may be provoking a costly response.

notice anything funny? there's no fucking mention of hundreds of innocent civilians who've been slaughtered by BO's flying death robots.

and this is funny too:

The message may be, “ ‘The U.S. is pounding us with drone attacks, but we’re powerful enough to strike back’; it’s certainly enough to attract ever more recruits to replace those they’re losing,” Mr. Hoffman said.

correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't the entire plot a huge fucking failure, and the guy who did it a huge fucking moron?

"amazing"

I've seen this in a few places, and it seems worth repeating here.

KABUL, Afghanistan — American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops, according to military officials in Kabul.

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

Later in the article:

The persistence of deadly convoy and checkpoint shootings has led to growing resentment among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate — a friction that has turned villages firmly against the occupation.

They hate us for our freedom! turns out to be correct — our freedom to kill them with impunity. Sorry, "what they see as" our freedom to kill them with impunity.

life and the spectacle

J.R. Boyd's LadyPoverty regularly posts excellent stuff, but this one really blew me away, and inspired a lot of thought about my own life. I recommend the whole thing, though I'll excerpt some of it to share my own thoughts.

It starts with this quote:

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle:

The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.

I've occasionally noted a feeling of disconnectedness from my world, or that I just don't quite belong where I am. Boyd's elaboration on Debord's thought is a brilliant explanation of a big part of the proximate mechanisms at work in that feeling, defining the spectacle as "the industrial production of information under capitalism."

This passage hits especially close to home:

I have a younger colleague at one of my jobs. When I am able to speak authoritatively on some matter of commercial urgency -- the release of a new movie or electronic product -- we enjoy a warm working relationship. The rest of our time, however, is comprised mostly of crickets and tumbleweeds. It is a sad testament to the fact that we don't consume enough of the same things with the same enthusiasm, for it is only in consuming things that one exercises that degree of individuality to which others can relate.

I relate to this very strongly, especially in regards to colleagues from my former professions and many people I've considered friends over the years. In academia it is a little bit better, to the extent that matters of academic interest are distinct from matters of commercial urgency, which is debatable. Still, even here, in a factory of science nerds whose shared purpose is, at least ostensibly, the pursuit of an understanding of the world, there are lots of nice people to whom I'm unable to relate without reference to movies or sports or some other mass media spectacles. Which isn't to say I dislike or think poorly of those people; quite to the contrary, I lament that spectacle is our only medium of discourse because I imagine I'd enjoy being able to bond over something more real.

Boyd continues:

Divorced from its commercial utility, individuality does not translate well. In fact, it is often met with silence and a horrified expression.

I think I've always tended to push the boundaries of acceptable individualism. In my first corporate job I did this mainly for its own sake, and a bit as rebellion against a stifling culture. Colleagues decorated their cubicles with sports banners; I strung rubber bands between thumbtacks at the right tensions that when I plucked them I could play the "NBC" network 3 notes. I broke unspoken rules by making the same jokes at lunch as I did in the office, knowing they'd get genuine laughs in the former setting, and nervous laughs in the latter. Basically I pushed them just far enough that they thought I was a bit weird, but not so far that they didn't like me. The reaction when I quit illustrates this tension rather well, and their response to my explanation suggests that lots of people would like to break free and be more individual, but are unable to do so for various reasons.

In academia I wouldn't go so far as to say that non-spectacle individuality is encouraged (again with the questionable exception of academic specialty), but a much wider range is tolerated than in the corporate world. But these days my efforts at individuality often have a moral/political purpose, which is where Boyd's final point rings true for me:

Anything which lacks its own promotional budget cannot be communicated intelligibly without enormous effort, because nobody enjoys a preexisting familiarity with it. As Guy Debord would say, our social relationships are mediated by the Spectacle: we can talk to each other about Haiti as long as it is made real by the TV. The rest of the time Haiti does not exist, so we can't talk about it. And that's because nobody will have anything to say about Haiti unless it is on the TV. If you had something to say about Haiti before it was on the TV, then you are a very odd bird, indeed, because nobody else shared that experience. Nobody knew it could exist, or why it should.

I hold political positions with which most people are unfamiliar because they're excluded from mainstream media. People have limited patience for political proselytism so I've taken the approach of trying to amuse people on a regular basis, and then occasionally throw out something substantive (It raised $50, which isn't much, but grad students basically live below the poverty line, so I was happy with that level of donation). Consistently keep people entertained, and they're more willing to listen to your occasional non-entertaining messages. Interestingly, that's the same basic model as commercial media, only they capture the profits for the enrichment of an elite few.

A challenging aspect of the whole thing is that it is pretty hard to be funny without reference to the spectacle, since a lot of humor depends on a shared base of knowledge. I don't want to use the spectacle, so I often try to make goodhearted jokes about people everyone knows, but sometimes I resort to movies. It's easier, and hell, it's fun. But I don't want to do it too often. I think my favorite of all these silly lists, and perhaps my best effort to combine my goal of raising awareness about important political/moral issues and keeping people amused was this one, in which I used Obama's Nobel Peace prize as a basis for a bunch of simple "opposite" jokes.

Anyway, props to J.R. Boyd for a great post, and check out his second post on the spectacle, here.

Greenwald ripping into GE's coporate censorship of NBC, as part of a sleazy deal with Fox News. GE agreed to prevent MSNBC from criticizing Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, in exchange for Fox agreeing not to report on GE's unpopular businesses.

Fuck GE.

one decent man? i doubt it, but kill him just in case!

again, i know sports is stupid, but sometimes you can learn a lot about people by the way they respond to sports and sports stories.  so take this thing where a a pittsburgh steelers player is not going to go with his teammates to the traditional white house visit that super bowl champs make.  and this is a big deal and people are freaking out about it.  

motherfuckers, the white house is the fucking command center of the world's most devastating human death machine.  why the fuck would anyone want to go there?  now i dont really expect mainstream commentators to say that.  but the speed with which these media idiots drop to their knees to suck the cock of state power is pretty pathetic.

a quick lesson on media

A discussion about (east coast/large market) bias in sports media broke out on my fantasy basketball message board, so I posted my thoughts on the matter (starting by quoting someone's comment from earlier in the conversation). I thought I'd recycle it here too, what the hell. "A quick lesson on media" I called it.

"espn and all media is a business, they cover whatever they think people will watch."

sometimes they (media folks) pretend that they're objective truth-seekers. then when they're criticized they suddenly become businesses just catering to the demands of their consumers, the ignorant rabble. (the contradiction never seems to bother them.)

why are their customers so ignorant? because the media refuses to inform them. why does the media refuse to inform them? because they don't want to be informed! repeat as needed.

keep in mind what the exact nature of media business is: selling audiences to advertisers. the media serves the interests of its owners. in some cases this is best accomplished by running a story because it will get ratings/sell papers today, to justify higher rates on advertising. in other cases it is best served by pushing information that works to some other end. not many businesses want to buy access to an audience being told about future economic woes. so media coverage of economic issues is biased towards the sunny side, until reality interferes too obviously with this, at which point the story becomes "nobody saw this coming" to cover their own ass.

also note of course that often times the owners of media businesses have a variety of other business interests, in which case media can serve as a propaganda outlet for their larger interests.

same dynamic plays out in sports coverage. follow the money.

Truth is not important

I came across the video below, a compilation of a guy named Peter Schiff on various news talk shows in 2006 and 2007. It is 10 minutes of him being right forecasting the current economic collapse, while all the other talking heads literally laugh at him. It is kind of fun to watch. My first thought was that those idiots who mocked him while they predicted endless booming growth should never get a job again.

But that was very silly of me, a vestige of my naive former worldview. I was imagining a world in which news programs are in the business of getting things right, of telling the truth.

News television, like all television (and other media for that matter), is in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. As such, we expect the programming to reflect these interests. Also, the major television networks are owned by a small handful of wealthy conglomerate corporations. As such, we expect the programming to reflect the interests of those corporations and their owners. These two interests largely overlap, though there can be a few conflicts, as in all cases where the same parties have multiple interests. In those cases strategic decisions have to be made. But in the case at hand, it is pretty easy to see that an audience of people who believe that endless economic prosperity is always just around the corner is easier to sell to advertisers, and is better for the corporations who own the media.

The only thing truth has to do with it is if the audience figures out how unreliable the programs are and stops watching. The immense popularity of Fox "News" is a prominent, but certainly not isolated, demonstration of the appropriate level of concern TV networks need have for such a scenario. If their dishonesty becomes impossible for the audience to ignore, they have ways of handling that too. After US forces failed to find any WMDs in Iraq, what did the TV networks that credulously amplified the false WMD justification for war tell you? That everyone believed there were WMDs, and nobody could have predicted otherwise. There is ample documentation to prove otherwise, but that doesn't matter. They just lie after the fact to cover up their previous lies.

So the idea that the laughing fools in the video will never work again is foolish. They've shown that they're willing to say whatever needs to be said to advance their careers. Networks make good use of such people.



(By the way I know nothing about this Schiff guy. He may or may not be advancing his own interests here, which may or may not have anything to do with the truth. Maybe he just got lucky. I don't know and don't really care.)

everything is totally changing!!!!!!!!

So Fox News is sticking up for the guy who wants to keep all options on the table when it comes to hawkish defense of Israel, wants to increase the size of the military, endorsed blanket immunity for telecom companies that illegally spied on Americans, refuses to consider impeachment of Bush, and who enthusiastically supported the Wall Street bail out fraud? Wow who would have believed it? This gives me so much hope that Fox News would defend a person like that. Such changes!

We all know the neocons are going to be "kicked out of power" and everything, and so it is almost like Fox News is starting to treat BO like one of their own the same as they did with those real neocons! Weird, huh? Next thing you'll be telling me that Fox News will approve of President-elect Obama's plan to retain Surge Petraeus and involve war criminal Colin Powell in his administration. What an upside down world!

blogs are a threat

Thinking out loud:

Blogs are a major threat to the establishment. They're like the new printing press. It used to be that the average person couldn't really contribute to public political dialog, until the printing press drastically reduced the cost of reaching lots of people. The printed word was power for a long time, until TV came along and everyone stopped reading and started getting all their information from TV. Highly concentrated wealth owns the broadcasting networks, and the average person can't really contribute. Now blogs come along and suddenly anyone with an email address can put their ideas out there. Good ideas draw an audience. Ideas different than those allowed on TV draw an audience. This is a threat, which is why mainstream media figures are so derisive towards bloggers.

So blogs are a weapon in the war of ideas, which is one reason I'd urge everyone to participate. Read blogs. Comment on blogs. Make your own. But an open question is whether the urge to sit in front of a computer and read or write a blog is taking away from the urge to go smash shit up in the streets.

bullshit

I noticed this article in hwong14's shared items and the headline caught my attention: "Does Power Corrupt? Absolutely Not." So I read the article and was a bit confused because the headline has basically nothing to do with the article. So then I went and read the paper featured in the article.

The experiments in the paper manipulate people's feelings of power, inducing them to feel temporarily powerful or powerless, and then gives them tasks. It generally found that people who feel powerful perform better than those who feel powerless. Read the paper for the details. One of the paper's authors, Adam Galinsky, has done other work on power, for example finding that feeling powerful is associated with reduced tendency to understand how other people think. I can see how that would bear on the corruption issue. But I don't see any way the featured research justifies a headline like that. It has nothing at all to do with corruption, though Galinsky does say it has "direct implications" on power and corruption. Aside from the headline, the lede sentence, and that quote, no other mention of corruption is made.

Coincidentally, the article was published in Time Magazine, a powerful and corrupt publication.

catch up blogging: NPR, Jeremiah Wright, Iran, voting

• I listened to about half an hour of NPR while I was home and was disgusted. 20 minutes of it was spent analyzing exactly how black Obama is, and how that mattered for his electability. The "issues" were mentioned once, as something that Obama would like to run on, but there was concern that "the media" wouldn't let him. Gee, NPR, I wonder how that would happen?
• The other 10 minutes were spent on how crazy and polarizing Jeremiah Wright is and what damage he is doing to the Obama campaign. No examination of what he says, of course. (Not that I care if Obama gets elected. His denunciations of Wright, with various lies packaged in, are pathetic and reveal him for what he really is, not that it wasn't already obvious.) I had a recent conversation about Wright with one of my more open-minded family members, who lamented how "divisive" he is, and yet seemed quite unaware of what the man has actually said. Gee, NPR, I wonder how that would happen?
• For typically excellent writing about Wright/Obama check out Floyd and Silber.
• I might comment more on this in a "why I won't vote" post, but check out the conversation here and at the post it links to. Is this the best the opposition has to offer?
• War with Iran seems inevitable, as I've said for a while now. I really feel like I want to be out of here before it happens. I don't exactly know why. My moving date is in 11 days, so... hooray I'll be in complete comfort in a slightly different wealthy nation before thousands of people are senselessly slaughtered! That's the boundless narcissism this blog was built upon.