Today, something unprecedented is happening. The Righties have banded together to destroy ONE person (a blogger claims he feels “threatened”). The entire front page of Memeorandum is dominated by this coordinated attack and smear. That OUGHT to scare hell out of everybody else, but I see virtually no commentary whatsoever. This is a dangerous precedent, the bloggy equivalent of Kristallnacht, perhaps. Beware.

Here is Patterico, taking a day off from the ongoing coordinated smear and personal destruction of Elizabeth Warren:

BREITBART TOLD THE STORY JUST BEFORE HE DIED

In the last radio interview Andrew Breitbart ever gave, on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, Breitbart talked about a new ruthless tactic used by thugs against political opponents:

[O]ne of the things they’ve done to people who have worked with me in the past, including an L.A. prosecutor, is to “SWAT.” That means that they’re spoofing phones, pretending to be somebody else’s phone, calling 911, and saying “I killed somebody” and then the person’s home is met with the guns drawn, the SWAT and the helicopters, in a horrifying act. It’s happened twice: once in New Jersey, once in Los Angeles, with an L.A. County . . . prosecutor who [is] associated with me.”

I am that L.A. County prosecutor. And in this post, you’ll hear the hoax call that sent police to my house, pointing loaded guns at me.

THE NIGHT I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED BECAUSE OF MY BLOGGING …

Ah, a coordinated act of personal destruction and blog terrorism claiming the selfsame projected qualities. “I know you are, but what am I?” as the noted pundit P.W. Herman is oft heard to say. And it’s always nice to see the ghoulish hand of Breitbart from beyond the grave …

Each to his own soothsaying says I. Some worship the Dow. Others (far too many) worship at the shrine of “Polls.” Not a day goes by that some new polling of the public (and we all know how painful THAT can be) reveals some grand new truth, or provides fodder for an army of journalists and bloggers who, evidently, don’t actually find anything much newsworthy and spend their long prologue into senescence by dithering about trivialites dug up by the unconscious biases of the pollsters  – because we can only poll on what we KNOW, and never on what we DON’T KNOW, which is where all the action in the news cycle is anyway.

Sadly, the pollsters, dependent on their constant polling commissions (and omissions) even find a way to capitalize (literally) on stunning new news, by polling the public on what they THINK about the twists and turns of history.

It is a form of soothsaying, unless mathematical prediction is any more legitimate a pursuit than the reading of turtle’s entrails or tea leaves.

If we all have free will, of course, polling doesn’t work. Then again, if all is Written by the Hand of Destiny, then we would think like most of the Eastern Hemisphere and our entire approach would be different.

So, allowing the metaphor of soothsaying, not as a belief system, or even as a serious proposition (since neither soothsayers nor scientists can grasp a simple fact in the whole morass, namely, that it either works or doesn’t work, based on an unprovable assumption that you can find in the Lord’s Prayer, an old Western/Middle Eastern notion called “As above, so below,” the basis of all sympathetic magic and skrying), today’s metaphor is Astrology.

In the land of no ears, Vincent van Gogh is king.

First I’ll tell you a fact: Algol is an eclipsing binary, Beta (ß) Perseus, known from time immemorial as the demon star.

Algol, the Demon, the Demon Star, and the Blinking Demon, from the Arabians’ Ra’s al Ghul, the Demon’s Head, is said to have been thus called from its rapid and wonderful variations; but I find no evidence of this [Star Names was published in 1889, it was that year that Algol was discovered to be an eclipsing binary — Wikipedia], and that people probably took the title from the second-century Greek astronomer Ptolemy. Al Ghul literally signifies a Mischief-maker, and the name still appears in the Ghoul of the Arabian Nights and of our day. It degenerated into the Alove often used some centuries ago for this star…

Our modern English word “ghoul” is derived from the Arabic name of the star, and it OUGHT to be a reminder to us that the reason so many of our major stars  carry Arabic names is that astronomy/astrology fell into disuse during the Dark Ages, and the flowering Arabic Civilization was ahead of Western Civilization in the arts and sciences. This is where we get “Algebra,” from the Arabian mathematicians. Nobody’s number one forever, and when the Western “knights” arrived during the Crusades, they were presented with a more technologically advanced civilization … which they stole freely from. But the star Algol has been pretty universally seen as maelevolent, even outside of the old Greek Myth of Perseus:

The Hebrews knew Algol as Rosh ha Satan, Satan’s Head, English writer on globes John Chilmead (circa 1639)’s Rosch hassatan, the Divels head; but also as Lilith, Adam’s legendary first wife, the nocturnal vampyre from the lower world that reappeared in the demonology of the Middle Ages as the witch Lilis, one of the characters in Goethe’s Walpurgis Nacht.

The Chinese gave it the gruesome title Tseih She, the Piled-up Corpses.

Astrologers of course said that it was the most unfortunate, violent, and dangerous star in the heavens, and it certainly has been one of the best observed, as the most noteworthy variable in the northern sky….

(from Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1889.)

And the old Ghoul has been in the news just this month:

Astronomers discover ancient Egyptian observations of a variable star
Posted by TANN
Ancient, Astronomy, Breakingnews, Egypt, Universe 11:30 AM

The study of the “Demon star”, Algol, made by a research group of the University of Helsinki, Finland, has received both scientific and public attention. The period of the brightness variation of this eclipsing binary star has been connected to good prognoses three millennia ago. This result has raised a lot of discussion and the news has spread widely in the Internet.

“The Demon Star” – Ancient Cairo Calendar Shows Egyptians
Discovered the Binary Algol 3200 Years Ago [Credit: NASA]

The Egyptian papyrus Cairo 86637 calendar is probably the oldest preserved historical document of bare eye observations of a variable star. Each day of one Egyptian year was divided into three parts in this calendar. A good or a bad prognosis was assigned for these parts of a day.

“The texts regarding the prognoses are connected to mythological and astronomical events”, says Master of Science Sebastian Porceddu…

The ancient Egyptians have made accurate measurements that provide useful constraints for modern astronomers.

“It seems that the first observation of a variable star was made 3000 years earlier than was previously thought”, says [docent] Lauri Jetsu. “However, I want to emphasize that our research has only been sent to a scientific journal about two weeks ago. This type of results can raise a lot of controversy before they are accepted.”

Controversy?

You see, in our modern understanding of astrology (which ought to be what astronomy is called, “the study of the stars” instead of “the naming of the stars”)  Algol is actually an eclipsing binary star: two stars engaged in a deadly dance around a gravitational midpoint, an invisible maypole.

And the larger is tearing the smaller one apart, sucking it like a tick, until all its mass has transferred to the larger star.

The ancient Egyptians didn’t know that, of course. All they knew was that there was a star that would grow brighter and darker over a period (currently) of 68.75 hours —  or just under three days — “winking” at them. This was discovered by all great astronomical cultures fairly early, as the 3,000 year old Egyptian observations attest.

from “Astronomy 162″ University of Tennessee

So, the Egyptian records give a differential time of revolution for the Algol binary of (in scienteze) “0.017 days.”

I kid you not. Seventeen thousandths of a day.

What is that in millimeters, I wonder? Gallons? Kilohertz? Puppies?

24 hours multiplied by 0.017 gives us 0.408000 hours, which is a number just as useless as 0.017 days, or 92.7 handshakes, 5.6 milkshakes or 1.0 earthquakes.

How about 60 minutes an hour 24 hours a day? Equals 1440 minutes in a day.

We’re onto something. Now we just multiply those minutes by that fraction of a day, and we’ll have a human number.

Lessee: 1440 times 0.017 gives us 24.48 minutes and rounding that (in engineering math) .48 of a 60 second minute is half, so 24 and a half minutes.

About half an hour in 3,000 years. Thank you Ancient Egyptian trained observers.

Now, we can figure out a lot about the mass and loss of mass of the cosmic duprass (or, perhaps triple star system):

“We can explain why the period of Algol has increased by about 0.017 days”, says Lauri Jetsu. “The period increase during the past three millennia could have been caused by the observed mass transfer between the two members of this binary. In fact, this would be the first observation that confirms the period increase of Algol and it also gives an estimate of the mass transfer rate.”

But isn’t it also interesting that humans all over the Earth, watching that phenomenon, and declared the Ghoul star the evilest star in the sky?

I mean, they’re just burning rocks in the sky in the modern conception, so why aren’t the results more random?

Anyway, the point here is that we will undoubtedly be looked at in 3,000 years as condescendingly as we look at 3,000 year old Egyptians, especially when we had to pay an exorbitant fee to view them. Or, eventually, us.

I like astrology for that reason: the world came up with different systems of interpreting the motion of the stars in the heavens as reflecting here on Earth, that preserved an unquestioned precept of millennia past: “On Earth as it is in Heaven.”

And, in the centuries following the rather acrimonious breakup of astronomy and astrology, the twain have rarely deigned to meet.

I like the old Ptolemaic astrology, and the Arabian Parts and the Lunar Mansions, and the Hindu and Chinese lore. This is the first time in history we’ve ever had a chance to go through everybody’s notes and compare them. It’s a way of getting into the heads of historical figures, remembering that they gave as much credence to their astrological weather as you and I give to polls and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

So, the soothsaying metaphor, and a coincidence and another metaphor and we’re done. (If it helps, our word “alcohol” also comes from Medusa’s head, the Gorgon star, Algol. Ghoul.)

Medusa by Carvaggio (1595)

The language of astrology is poetic language for psychology, and modern astrology has been thoroughly adulterated with it. Everything is a lovely metaphor and nothing bad ever happens. You are in charge of your destiny, they intone in silky, comforting tone, and find some ‘lucky’ star to make you feel better.

This is a trick known to palmists and portfolio advisors alike, never give bad news, since, if you’re wrong, they’ll despise you. But, if you only give good news (or “buy” advice), they will only remember the pleasure of the gains and never the pain of the losses. It is a problem in soothsaying from astrologers to the business press, that never tell you the bad news in direct proportion to when you need it most.

Thus it was, when the eclipse occurred last Sunday, I noted the old Fixed Stars that were mainstays from before old Ptolemy (diviner of the Epicycles, that strange explanation of the wanderers — planets — suddenly reversing themselves and traveling backwards over many nights) until after Sir Isaac Newton (who cast and constructed horoscopes, there being as yet no bill of divorcement between astronomy and astrology).

After all, a “horoscope” is nothing more or less than a map of the sky dome (above the horizon) and the unseen sky dome below the horizon. If you know the night sky, and know to factor in a full thirty degrees* (the precession of equinoxes that most modern astrology has failed to note) , you could generate a “horoscope” for that hour and walk outside and know where to find all the stars and planets. It’s just a simplified sky map for a point in time.

[* thirty degrees equals, in human terms, three widths of your fist held at arm's length from your eye. Straight up is 90 degrees. The width of your little finger is two degrees, and the width of its fingernail is one. ]

Almost all cultures have taken this VERY seriously, however — as the careful Egyptians measured the blinking of the demon star three thousand years ago — and as comets were said to presage the fall of a king, or a plague, so, too everyone was sure that the stars moving in the sky meant something. And we have projected our mythology and our psychic history onto the night sky, and that’s why I enjoy it without necessarily subscribing to it: the rich tapestry of human poetic history is writ there, and guided the minds of our recent forebears.

When the Spanish Influenza struck the World during World War I, many all over the world (and right here in the Good Ol’ USA) were absolutely convinced that the Influenza came from the tail of Halley’s Comet, which we passed through when it returned in 1910.

The Head of Medusa, by Peter Paul Rubens (1618)

Or consider the origins of the word “Influenza,” which comes from Italian by way of the Latin root that creates our own word “influence.”

The word Influenza comes from the Italian language meaning “influence” and refers to the cause of the disease; initially, this ascribed illness to unfavorable astrological influences.^[155] *

[* Wikipedia Footnote source = "Influenza, The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition."]

 You see? That old thought system is woven into the warp and woof of our culture, just like the Bible, and it is foolish to be culturally illiterate in either — whether one believes or not.

Which brings us to the eclipse. Now, in the old reckoning, eclipses are bad things. And the “ruler” of “ruling planet” of the eclipse is an indicator of how bad it will be. I am not an astrologer, nor a deep practitioner, but even I could look at it and see that the “ring of fire” eclipse took place over the Plieades, specifically Alcyone, and that Mercury (the “ruler”) and Jupiter were in tight conjunction over Algol at the time.

So, I checked the various web sites and online astrology sites to SEE how this was interpreted.

All New Agey “have a nice day” nothing to see here and suchlike. Virtually no modern astrologer noticing the Algol connection, and most saying that “in the olden days, the Plieades and Alcyon were considered bad/malefic, but, really, there’s no bad stuff and everything’s fine.”

Wood carving (door) by Thomas Regnaudin circa 1660

Even in the older branch of astrology, very little acknowledgement of the event. The older branch is called “mundane” or worldly astrology. It deals with the fate of nations and the world stage. It’s older because kings and potentates were concerned with it, and could pay court astrologers salaries, while the newer branch “horary” or hourly astrology deals with your personalhoroscope, and if you’ll meet your soulmate, etcetera. Not a big dollar market draw, and until recently, historically, the lesser focus of astrologers. Even old  J.P. Morgan, he of the invisible dirk and father of the modern bank that just lost $3 billion in derivatives trading, said  “Millionaires don’t have astrologers, billionaires do.”

(One wonders whether their current astrologer saw that coming.)

I finally found ONE more traditional astrologer who said this:

I don’t think I’ve ever done a chart where there were so many negative stars and I hope to never have to write about one again.

Now, my point isn’t whether astrology works, remember. My point is that, IF it did work, then virtually all astrologers should have noticed this really bad omen in the “heavens.”*

[* "Heavens" because most astrologers nowadays rely on computer software to tell them where the stars are, or old ephemerides books to do the same, and virtually NOT ONE of them could actually go outside and SHOW you the constellation of Gemini, or Taurus or Capricorn, and would have no idea that the bright star in the evening sky was Venus, nor that Mars is prominent in the constellation of Leo, or that Saturn is just two fingers' width from Spica, or "Arista" in the night sky. They claim to read the stars that they only know from books and not from the simple and traditional "looking up at the sky."]

And there is our metaphor. The astrologers of today are so much filled with their “have a nice day” and psychological nonsense that what would have been a clear sign to any astrologer of, say, the past 3,000 years is invisible to them, even assuming that astrology worked.

So, too, the liberal blogs and news media.

The sign of a concerted, coordinated blog swarm to destroy one person hasn’t been seen as clearly as when Billy launched HIS Kristolnacht against one Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp and the New Republic magazine in 2007, which they later tacitly ADMITTED*. Then, the left wing blogs remained comatose. Today, as something far bigger, and far uglier takes place, the leftie blogosphere remains as comatose about the omen in the bloggy heavens as our modern astrologers are blind to the very sort of sign that their astrology exists to see and interpret.

[* Note that old "Butt Plug Bob" is part of today's smearandsmash. See The Columbia Journalism Review's post-mortem on L'Affaire Beauchamp.]

That is the metaphor. Both groups OUGHT to have the perspicacity to read the handwriting on the wall. Neither does.

Here, by the by, is the old interpretation of the influence of Algol [Wikipedia]:

In the Tetrabiblos, the 2nd century astrological text of the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy, Algol is referred to as “the Gorgon of Perseus” and associated with death by decapitation: a theme which mirrors the myth of the hero Perseus’ victory over the snake-headed Gorgon Medusa. Astrologically, Algol is considered the most unfortunate star in the sky, and was listed as one of the 15 Behenian stars. Historically, the star has received a strong association with bloody violence across a wide variety of cultures.

Modern “psychological” astrologers throw out the 4,000 years of observation and cross-cultural interpretation and just go with the “Perseus” myth about Medusa and say it’s about “angry women.“ (Not because it makes sense, but because it’s convenient to their archetypal/Jungian interepretations.)

Modern “psychological” astrologers discount the literal, and emphasize the tendency to “lose one’s head” in a paroxysm of rage. Today’s blogswarm is certainly an interesting coincidence of that interpretation, but we must, needs, pooh-pooh any correlation for the purposes of our Metaphor, today. Just an interesting coincidence.

Perseus gave Medusa’s head to Athena
who placed it on her Aegis, her shield,
where it was last heard of. (Seeing it is
somewhat difficult for mortal observers) 

And here is sleazebag Michael Barone in Real Clear Politics (on another matter, but double apropos here, like Algol):

Cocooned Liberals Are Unprepared for Political Debate
By Michael Barone
May 24, 2012

It’s comfortable living in a cocoon — associating only with those who share your views, reading journalism and watching news that only reinforces them, avoiding those on the other side of the cultural divide.

Liberals have been doing this for a long time. In 1972, the movie critic Pauline Kael said it was odd that Richard Nixon was winning the election, because everyone she knew was for George McGovern….

The media followed the avowedly non-story stories yesterday and today, strung together by their gills as surely as any bunch of rainbow trout. And, dutifully, they bunked and debunked the same old tired stories. Consider what’s come up in the past week, and then consider Albert Einstein’s old definition of insanity: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So: Are the Republicans crazy? Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not at all. Madness, Day Two:

TPMMuckraker  —  Arizona Goes Birther: Secretary Of State Says It’s ‘Possible’ Obama Won’t Be On Ballot  —  The man in charge of running Arizona’s elections has gone to the birthers.  Secretary of State Ken Bennett now says he’s not convinced Barack Obama was really born in the United States …

They resurrected the old “Obama is a CELEBRITY!” meme last week (Ronald Reagan was a Movie Star, but I guess that’s different). They resurrected the “Birther” controversy yesterday. And the Reverend Wright controversy, but in a particularly telling manner. Weirdest damned thing. All day yesterday, the GOPs pushed the Breitbartian meme (Obama born in KENYA!) while pooh-poohing it at the SAME TIME. Same thing with Reverend Wright (as throughly libeled a Black minister as has been seen since Dr. King) as everyone screamed WRIGHT IS OUT OF BOUNDS!

(Oh, and the Obama campaign is engaged in “character assassination” and Willard (not the rat guy) wants a “civil” debate about the issues, perhaps the most lunatic reversal/projection of reality since Baghdad Bob paused in his denial of any American troop advances towards Baghdad, so that the sound of the tank shells exploding wouldn’t overwhelm his sound bite.

A character that wasn’t assassinated 

When your *entire political history* since Joe McCarthy is based on mindless hate of the “Other” (Commies, hippies, Ay-rabs, Al Qaeda, Democrats, then Liberals, now “Leftists” – a term formerly interchangeable with Commies, as in “Leftist Guerillas”) sooner or later the only one left to hate is your own citizens. We have reached that point. Like I say: we burned Atlanta once. We can do it again. (And don’t be fooled by the team jerseys, the “old South” is now the strongest “Red” voting bloc in the USA.)

Ann Coulter genuflects at Joe McCarthy’s grave

If we keep our gaze fixed on their dog and pony show, they’ll steal every available legislature, governorship, congressional and senate race. Obama will defeat the lame Mittster, and they’ll cry all the way to the bank. And then it’ll pretty much be kabuki theater thereafter, as our hand slipped from the levers of power because they greased ‘em. Yeah. I think there’s too scary a chance that they’ll win to go back to sleep with Dancing With the Stars, the Kardassians and other bread and circuses.

That’s the whole point. It is when Proteus is trapped that he becomes most dangerous.

Thus, Morphing Mitt.

There IS no rational reason to vote for the Republicans. Seriously:

So, they HAVE to rely on conditioning and reptile brain arguments.

When Upton Sinclair wrote that seminal muckraking novel The Jungle, published in 1906, he later reflected on its national impact thusly:

“I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

And woe betide any “smart” Democrat/Liberal/Leftist/Socialist who keeps making the same old mistake of thinking that this election has ANYthing to do with the heart … or the head.

It’s the gut, and unless progressives address that, they are surely sunk. And it is NOT by accident. And it shows the Rovian hand: the viciously racist attack on Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, which grows more absurd by the day, the absurdist revanching of the “birther” ploy, the “reverse racist” Jeremiah Wright meme (because, you know, the whole history of America is rife with Black racism against Whites from the South), the “Celebrity” meme (and the implication that all celebrities are, like Ronald Reagan, clueless ditherers who commit treason to obtain office), and all the other lunacy that can hit the stomach, bypassing the head, reinforcing Pavlovian themes (and not political memes).

And the pundits, in pointing out the absurdity of the latest lunacy only HELP to reinforce it, by taking it intellectually seriously without ever addressing the REAL appeal of the unreal: to steal the deal and make us squeal.

My friends, it ends. Else …

And Thurston Howell IV and his yawping Band of Hatemeisters rule an age of darkness, poverty and disease.

Fun.

Don’t think of an elephant.

Ganesh with invisible Sarod

An elephant.

An elephant.

Courage.

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog

Happy birthday Thomas Pynchon. [Note, was on May 8.]

School Choice

We know that the Right Wing dislikes actual rational thought: evolution, global warming, science, higher education. OK: ALL edumacation.

This week brings to light a series of ugly “What do them experts know? Any boob knows more than any so-called ‘expert’!” arguments.

We begin with Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, who has somehow slipped into an attitude of utter “expertise” on governance and policy that is in no wise borne out by the evidence. He’s BORED with the election. Awww: 

… Obama and Romney feels like a contest between two calculating centrists, fighting for the right to serve as figurehead atop a bloated state apparatus that will operate according to the same demented imperial logic irrespective of who wins the White House. George Bush’s reign highlighted the enormous power of the individual president to drive policy, which made the elections involving him compelling contests; Obama’s first term has highlighted the timeless power of the intractable bureaucracy underneath the president, which is kind of a bummer, when you think about it.

Then there’s one more thing – Obama versus Romney is the worst reality show on TV since the Tila Tequila days. The characters are terrible, there’s no suspense, and the biggest thing is, it lacks both spontaneity and a gross-out factor. In Reality TV, if you don’t have really sexy half-naked young people scheming against each other over campfires in the Cook Islands, you need to have grown men eating millipedes or chicks in bikinis drinking donkey semen. And if you don’t have that, you really need Sarah Palin.

This race has none of that. Biden is the best character in the series, but for exactly that reason the Obama administration would be wise to bury crazy Joe in a salt mine until the election is over.

And so on and so forth. Taibbi has a right to feel disillusioned, but the old “I’m better than all this” snark is as specious as it is tired. We don’t live in a perfect world, but we are required to DEAL with the world we’re in. And Taibbi increasingly seems to feel that not only IS there a perfect world, but that he alone inhabits it. Frankly, his Olympian preenings and pronouncements sound more and more out of touch as evidenced here. But that’s not the real meat of this intellectual abattoir. (Even though, increasingly, Taibbi’s got the knacker.)

Worse, this is the most consequential election of my lifetime, and the Dred Pirate Roberts Court has handed the keys to the safe to those who looted the treasury (remember, nearly all that Iraq cash came back to US war contractors or soldiers’ pay sent home) and, having only audacity, the MUST win this election, else face REAL regulations and even criminal charges.

The latest political headlines powered by NBC News and msnbc.com  —  NBC News projects Lugar defeated in Indiana primary  —  NBC News has declared Richard Mourdock as the projected winner in the Indiana Senate primary.  Mourdock defeated six-term Republican foreign policy elder statesman Sen. Richard Lugar…

As today’s Indiana outcome shows, the Koch/AFP/Tea Party Axis of Evil can take down an insufficiently obeisant GOP Senator, as Dick Lugar was involuntarily retired in today’s primary. And, unlike Holy Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, or Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, Indiana has a “sore loser” law doesn’t allow any run or write-in in the general election.

You lose, you lose: Like March Madness on the basketball court, and not the endless appeals that make the modern law court such a joke.

This is a consequential election, and Mr. Taibbi’s “boredom” with it only stresses Mr. Taibbi’s intellectual limitations.

Which is a perfect segue into what’s really going on today, “intellectual limitations” …

Anti-gay amendment passed in N. Carolina today

Pirate Rupert Murdoch’s The New York Post SCREAMS:

Academics’ response to criticism? Fire that racist!
9:55 AM, May 7, 2012 by Abby W. Schachter

As a blogger for the Chronicle of Higher Education Naomi Schaefer Riley is paid to write about what is going on in academia from her perspective. She was doing her job when Riley wrote about the failure of black studies at American universities, citing PhD dissertations as evidence of the weakness of the discipline.

The response to her post can be summed up as follows: She’s a racist and she should be fired….

Of course. Every dumbass in America can attest to how hideously prejudiced those eggheads are.

Little Billy Kristol’s The Weakly Standardud picks up on THE HORROR, THE HORROR of the Right’s newest Martyr to the Language Police. Mistah Kurtz, he write:

Not the Weakly Standardud, but might as well be

Mob on the Quad 
2:22 PM, MAY 8, 2012 • BY JONATHAN V. LAST

Late last night, in a shameful example of editorial cowardice, the Chronicle of Higher Education fired Naomi Schaefer Riley. Naomi is a good friend of mine, a sometimes contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, and a fine writer. And the story of what happened to her is highly instructive.

Naomi joined the Chronicle’s “Brainstorm Blog” a little over a year ago. It was a good hire—she’s written two insightful books on academia, God on the Quad and The Faculty Lounges, along with dozens of articles on the subject. Her postings were smart and entertaining. (For a couple of samples, click over to “If this is art, your middle-school daughter is Picasso” and “No sex for you.”)

Last week she wrote about the world of “Black Studies” in a post titled “The most persuasive case for getting rid of Black Studies? Read the dissertations.” You should read the whole thing, because it’s only 520 words, but here’s the gist of Naomi’s argument:

I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them.

That’s what I would say about Ruth Hayes’ dissertation, “‘So I Could Be Easeful’: Black Women’s Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth.” It began because she “noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature, which led me to look into historical black midwifery.” How could we overlook the nonwhite experience in “natural birth literature,” whatever the heck that is? It’s scandalous and clearly a sign that racism is alive and well in America, not to mention academia. [...]

The Gadsdumb Flag

TWS is no longer owned by Rupert Murdoch (who was losing $2 million a year underwriting it) but the connections are still there. As is the use of media to counter-smear those who read Ms. Riley’s somewhat less than lily-white screed, albeit in the completely Black and White world of Murdochiana/GOPville, she IS white and IS talking about Black, ergo, White makes Right.

And, of course, by cherry-picking dissertations, her Limbaughesque screed is “justified”? All Black Studies dissertations are written by morons is the implicit assumption. You see, if anything either stupid, or, taken out of context, a stupid quote appears, ALL Black studies ought to be disbanded?

That’s intellectual. Fer sure, fer sure.

We loves us some Rupert

Here’s what the editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education said to her readers:

A Note to Readers
May 7, 2012, 7:21 pm

By Liz McMillen
When we published Naomi Schaefer Riley’s blog posting on Brainstorm last week (“The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations”), several thousand of you spoke out in outrage and disappointment that The Chronicle had published an article that did not conform to the journalistic standards and civil tone that you expect from us.

We’ve heard you, and we have taken to heart what you said.

We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles. As a result, we have asked Ms. Riley to leave the Brainstorm blog.

Since Brainstorm was created five years ago, we have sought out bloggers representing a range of intellectual and political views, and we have allowed them broad freedom in topics and approach. As part of that freedom, Brainstorm writers were able to post independently; Ms. Riley’s post was not reviewed until after it was posted.

I realize we have made mistakes. We will thoroughly review our editorial practices on Brainstorm and other blogs and strengthen our guidelines for bloggers.

In addition, my Editor’s Note last week inviting you to debate the posting also seemed to elevate it to the level of informed opinion, which it was not. I also realize that, as the controversy unfolded last week, our response on Twitter did not accurately convey The Chronicle’s message.

I sincerely apologize for the distress these incidents have caused our readers and appreciate that so many of you have made your sentiments known to us.

One theme many of you have sounded is that you felt betrayed by what we published; that you welcome healthy informed debate, but that in this case, we did not live up to the expectations of the community of readers we serve.

You told us we can do better, and we agree.

—Liz McMillen, Editor

Oh. Well, they’re just stoopid racists. Next question?

A more rational tea party

NO! We’s smarteez! This iz censoring and stuff! And Nick Gillespie at the Koch-funded Reason foundation just chipped in his two buffalo chips’ worth:

I do find the Chronicle’s response absolutely breath-taking and craven in its censoriousness. If the questions raised by Schaefer Riley’s posts are outside the bounds of discussion at a blog about higher education, then why bother having even the semblance of a discussion? And it strikes me as disingenuous to sack someone for a single blog post that did not meet the Chronicle’s “basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles.” There’s no question of ethics or professionalism raised by Schaefer Riley’s posts than those that are raised by an ongoing series of articles about what a waste of time and money and resources it is to get a degree in English, or art history, or sociology, or whatever.

This is plainly a politically correct response to a thug’s veto and should be owned up to as such.

Unknown, Howard Rich, Nick Gillespie, Andrea Rich

Never one to let a snark get caught in his obligatory Black Leather Jacket (else he would have no identity, seemingly), Gillespie can’t help but end with this:

Ironically, the post at Brainstorm (possibly the worst name for a blog since The New Republic introduced “The Plank” and “The Spine”) …

Ahh. Them racist intellek’chuals. We’s all real much smarter than them, because dumb = real smart, where smart = dumb.

Two plus two really DOES equal five?

Or, perhaps the “Martyr” abused her freedom to say whatever she wanted, without regard to the Editorial policies or readership, whose hard-earned bucks trickle down into Ms. Multi-name Riley’s exchequer. Naw. Like Limbaugh, we MUST patronize the businesses that pay to have us insulted. Free speech, in this case, trumping the Almighty Dollar, in one of those rare instances of the GOPpers being against the “Free Market.” Right.

Fake cowboy bringing aspirin to the women of the world

Here’s Foster “Aspirin Knees” Friess’ paid-blogger on President Obama’s twenties (from the new rooting-through-garbage book):

Obama’s Writings Clearly Display His Everyman Status
by T. J. Haley
May 4, 2012

Letters to girlfriends will always come back to bite you

[quoted letter from book ...]

Quite a read, huh? It sounds like Barack Obama was an absolute riot to hang out with back in the day. Why would anyone ever call this man an elitist?

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: No one understands everyday Americans like people who were analyzing the nuances of T.S. Eliot in their early 20s.

If I could choose five famous people I would most want to sit down with and discuss Eliot’s love for metaphysical poetry, Barack Obama would be at the top of the list.

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog

It ought to be enough to know that, since “the liberal media” is going to distort the ‘truth,’ it’s OK to distort your ‘truth‘ up front, so that you can ‘balance‘ the bias.

Logically, whatever the truth or falsity of your premise (that there IS a ‘liberal media’ and it will ‘slant’ the news in a ‘liberal’ direction), it is indisputable that YOU are biased, and, therefore the justification of your need to be biased … is that bias is a bad thing.

Quod Erat Dumbonstrandumb.

The Romneyites met with the Blogosmear™ yesterday, and, while the press has eyes, they do not see, nor, with ears, do they hear. The particulars were reported without, seemingly, understanding what it all meant. Here are the particulars. Huffington Post:

NEW YORK — In an effort to reach out to conservative media, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and wife Ann met for two hours Wednesday with several dozen conservative bloggers, reporters and columnists in an off-the-record gathering at a private Washington, D.C. club, according to attendees.

Romney, who struggled with some members of the conservative media during the Republican primary, is banking on their support in his campaign against President Barack Obama, regardless of whether they were previously in his corner or not.

The attendees came from numerous conservative sites and right-of-center publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator,Washington Examiner, Human Events, RedState, Right Wing News, Powerline, Townhall, Ace of Spades, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier and PJ Media. RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.

Details of the Romney meeting did not previously leak out because of the off-the-record ground rules…

My first reaction to that list was, What? Where were Breitbart.com’s media assassins?

Gone, but not unsnotten

Not to worry. Buzz Feed reports:

The meeting, which included writers from RedState and Breitbart.com as well as a list of conservative publications reported by Huffington Post — National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator, Washington Examiner, Powerline*, Townhall,, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier, and PJ Media (though not, as an early report had suggested, the conspiracist site WorldNetDaily). RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.

Notably, the meeting also included some grassroots bloggers with no real institutional ties to the Washington Republican Establishment, including the Twitter virtuoso Ace of Spades and John Hawkins of Right Wing News.

[* Powerline Proprietor John Hinderaker is the newest Koch installation on the Cato Institute Board of Directors, his firm does work for Koch and the blog was prominent in the takedown of Dan Rather via blogswarm. This memory will be important below.]

And, a bit further down, in the Huffington Post story, this:

Ann Romney told attendees that she planned to discuss economic issues on the trail from a women’s perspective. Last month, she pushed back against Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen for saying that the mother of five had never worked a day in her life, a charge Rosen later apologized for.

Forest: trees. Trees, forest.

Remember April 30th’s “The Witching Hour“? GOP modus operandi:

• Demonize
• Denounce
• Distract

They’ve already managed to turn the astonishing embarrassment of Lunatic Theodore Nugent into a successful distraction, instead of the unsuccessful “showing their cards” of bigotry, barely masked racism and manufactured paranoia:

Ted Nugent’s Bizarre CBS Interview Culminates In Profanity-Laced Speech About Being Moderate
VIDEO

Musician and activist Ted Nugent sat down with CBS’ Jeff Glor for his first on-camera interview since his talks with the Secret Service over comments he’d made about President Barack Obama at the National Rifle Association’s recent conference in St. Louis.

[...]

“I’m pretty moderate,” he told Glor.

Really? He says what he said (and similar ugly things about Hilary Clinton sucking his machine gun, et al.) and is FETED*? Is treated like a serious pundit, rather than a serious candidate for a rubber room? Listen to the interview and ask yourself how CBS ever sank so low as to air this vile tripe, and how lemming-like ABC is to have picked up on and REPORTED it? Good ghod, people. Joe the Plumber runs for Kongress while Ted the Dumber spews verbal sadism at the interviewer for merely doing his job in putting the Vandal on the airwaves.

[* More like "fetid."]

The “distract” mechanism is working puuuuuuuuurectly, to quote Mr. Burns. Excellent.

What Buzz Feed found was this:

The Twitter smackdown of Hilary Rosen

Here is what Buzz Feed reports:

At the Republican National Committee yesterday, conservative online writers and bloggers who arrived to meet with Romney were also shown a chart that seemed to explain the Romney campaign’s new warmth toward them. The chart (resembling, a source said, the one produced by Twitter above) illustrated the role a hyperactive conservative Twitterverse played in turning Hilary Rosen’s jab at Ann Romney into a great campaign moment for the Republican.

This additional bit of information fills out the picture:

The event, two bloggers told BuzzFeed, was organized by Patrick Hynes, a veteran online GOP consultant. It featured some friction on issues like health care, but a broader sense that ranks are closing against the common enemies of Obama and the liberal media.

“It was facing reality — what are we going to do?” asked one attendee. “Everybody agrees with Romney that, policy-wise, Obama is a disaster and a threat.“

All right. We can now solve the puzzle. (And, I hope that the deeply conspiratorial nature of the GOP-blog-media linkage in an Information War is not a surprise to my readers.)

At the highest level (as when Bush met with the Right Wing Bloggers in the fall of 2007), the Romney/RNC is organizing a fanatical opposition (“disaster and a threat”) to President Obama for the election, and, flush with success (Buzz Feed headline: “After A Twitter Win, Romney Meets The Online Right – A united front against Obama and the liberal media.”), the Rovian Strategy becomes apparent.

The “Ann Romney, Victim” meme was as false a meme as any con man ever shucked a rube by. We now have the evidence of HOW that falsehood was spread (see “The War on the War on Women Woman“ April 13).

This is the Rovian tactic of dominating EVERY news cycle of every day (ofttimes with a George Dubya speech in the morning), so that the “initiative” (as in chess) is always with the black pieces, as the black kings and queens, the black knights and bishops and their black pawns attempt to rook us all about the Black president.

Instead of dominating every day, they have focused their attention to dominating every HOUR, every MINUTE via coordinated Twitter attacks, a la Ann Romney’s apotheosis and translation to Maternal Heaven and Virgin Maryhood, via a Chariot of Ire. Don’t believe me? Take a look at what Mitt’s “store” is selling for your bumper:

From the Romney Store (captured 4-27-12)

Do you get it? They MADE their coordinated false meme into “reality.” That Mitt meeting with the Mendacious was not to coordinate “news.” It was to coordinate the creation of “news” irrespective of facts. Their “triumph” was akin to Big Brother’s triumph over Winston Smith when Smith finally sees that 2 + 2 really DOES = 5. (You just have to spend enough time in Room 101. Simple.)

OK. When we crunch all the data (and the simple collusion of Rightie bloggers, openly, with the Romney/RNC campaign OUGHT to, itself — by the standards of “JournoList” and Shirley Sherrod — be worthy of SCREAMING and SCANDAL!), the Rightie/Romney/R-Money tactic of choice for fall becomes clear.

Where, beginning with Dan Rather, the blogosmear­™ was used to drive news cycles, the new weapon of choice is Twitter. And that can mean only one thing:

Twitskrieg.

As Roman historian Tacitus notes in Chapter XI of the Annals, “Crime once exposed had no refuge but in audacity. They had accomplices in all who feared the same fate….“

Courage.

==============

UPDATE 1:33 PM PDT: Look what just showed up on my radar – The New York Times adds the following evidence, looking through the other end of the telescope:

May 4, 2012, 8:11 AM
Republicans Use Crowdsourcing to Attack Obama Campaign
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

[...]

An e-mail from the Republican National Committee urged conservatives to use the Twitter hashtag #Julia to mock the timeline. And mock they did. Throughout the day, Twitter was filled with sarcastic messages that described “Julia” as a ward of the government.

Facts is facts, folks. (Republicans, excepted, of course.)

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog

If you join Team Lars you get a special gift!

Lars Larson has a face for radio. The less said the better. But old Lars has managed to parlay his Portland, Oregon three-hours of hatespeak and faux-Limbaughian Ideological holiness into an additional three hours of national syndication. But, tell you what; here’s the kind of listeners Lars has:

Reviews*

(* all five star: *****, thus “By:” is actually “*****  [date]“, i.e. ***** February 17, 2010)

Customer Reviews

February 17, 2010

By: Earl W (Kenosha, WI) Perfect hat, you are a champ Lars

February 03, 2010

By: Roman D (El Paso, TX) This is the pride of my hat collection.

February 01, 2010

By: Johnathan R (Flagstaff, AZ) Just got this today, thank you for the nice hat.

January 28, 2010

By: Irene A (Casper, WY) I gave this as a gift to my husband who loves Lars and is an avid hunter.

January 27, 2010

By: Monty W (Lake Placid, NY) Very fine cap! Good cap with a good message.

January 26, 2010

By: Chris E (Milwaukee, WI) I get nice compliments when I am out and about with this on. Our freedom in the country is very important thanks to the Second Amendment.

January 25, 2010

By: Bill J (Plainfield, IN) Our second amendment and Lars, the best 2 things our country has!

January 25, 2010

By: Dirk G (Akron, OH) Nicely made cap, just as good as the one I paid lot more for at the feed store.

January 04, 2010

By: PI (hoffington, TX) Love the hat.

December 19, 2009

By: John R. (Topeka, KS) I love this hat. I’m getting another one for my dad for christmas.

What is this incredible hat? But … wait. There’s something extremely odd about those ‘reviews,’ you might note, if you’ve ever read any comments anywhere. Take a moment. What do you notice?

Sure. We’re real.

 They are ALL perfect.

One or two short, grammatically correct* sentences. No egregious spelling errors, and no punctuation/usage errors except for the very first sentence, nexst to last entry and the very last word, as the thief relocks the door on his way out.

[Or, as grammatically and unambiguously said as Americans get.]

Sorry. Doesn’t happen.

Go look at the comments section of anywhere, anytime (except for, say very specialized blogs, like writers’ boards or academic blogs) and you will never see anything as perfect as this.

Tellingly, however, they are all perfect in that they exactly address the selling points of the special merchandise, and THAT never EVER happens. All on topic?

All perfectly grammatical, all perfectly spelled, all perfectly apropos AND all Five Star! Highest Rating! Oh, and all appropriately folksy. No talk of Obama as the Devil; no sneering at liberals. Which makes it an utter rarity in all Conservative comments sections. Mirabile dictu!

Even when you admit cleaning up the spelling, it doesn’t happen, and even if you DID, why leave “Christmas” uncapitalized and the first period off? Unless, of course, your intent was to deceive with the old “appeal to popular opinion” fallacy. Hmmm. This is a puzzlement.

Of course, “all” the reviews cover a very narrow date range between Christmas season 2009 and Mid-February 2010. They have the “top” reviews on the page, but, funny thing is, when you click “all reviews,” the only new review that pops up is the last, bad “Christmas” spelling comment. Perhaps not perfect enough.

OK: they’re trying to “sell” you. You probably “get” that, but then you ask, “so what?”

And you get this answer. Because it doesn’t bother you that he’s lying to you.

Here’s the hat:

Great. You’re hiding, pissed off and have guns.

Which segues to this steaming turd dropped on the streets of Manhattan today:

Why look, the Negro is doing one of those obscene End Zone Touchdown Dances! Buzz Feed comments on its screencap above:

New York Post Mocks Obama’s Afghanistan Trip  —  Two schools of thought: Obama is at risk of being seen as politicizing national security.  Or, any day spent talking about Osama Bin Laden, and not the economy, is a good one.

But that misses the reptile brain point. The linkage is to THIS image:

Gay Satan-worshipping Negroes invoke
the Goat-headed One to shocked onlookers 

I’m exaggerating. Or am I?

The dog whistles are getting pretty damned loud, even if you’re hard of hearing from all those rock concerts when you were a kid.

Certainly the madness is deep in the blood. If you’ll join “Team Lars” you too can have a camouflage cap with your inviolable right to have guns emblazoned on it. How the hell is that not hostile and paranoid? Or, as Ollie North told Lars this morning: “Oh, I forgot to mention, I’m a Board Member of the NRA and a lifetime member.”

But they weren’t there to talk about the NRA. North was hyping his upcoming “appearance” which Lars would be on stage at. With a cell phone connection so bad Lars would have 86ed any other guest, North painfully answered Larson’s questions about “was Obama spiking the ball in Afghanistan” the “perfect” thought that all rightie bloggers and talk show hosts mysteriously came up with at the same exact moment, sometime yesterday. (Possibly accompanied by the distinct mechanical whirr of a fax machine.)

Isn’t that just “perfect”?

And, one must bear in mind that the Rovian Hand does its swiftboating by attrition, by relentlessly beating the association into the reptile brain of listeners and viewers.

Did I mention that Oliver North is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch, UnLTD. just like the New York Post?

The “indispensable man” for GOP power politix

But don’t worry. The News Corp board of Directors has just issued this flash:  News Corporation Board of Directors Issues Unanimous Statement of Support for Rupert Murdoch

Or that the strange British Newspaper memes (like the one that launched the “Swiftboating” of Obama and the death of Osama bin Laden yesterday) began appearing coincident with Murdoch’s ascension to Republican Kingmaker? About twenty years ago?

The British Are Coming JOSH MARSHALL APRIL 30, 2012, 10:17 PM For the last twenty years or so, Republican presidential campaigns have used the British tabloid press to pitch their hit pieces that couldn’t get placed in the more professional US press. (Yes, it’s a pretty sad commentary on journalism in the UK but that’s where foreign intelligence services usually plant or pay in their disinformation campaigns too.) You can see here the first efforts of the folks around the Romney campaign to push what amounts to a ‘Navy Seals for Truth’ pitch to defend the former Massachusetts Governor. (The piece is being pushed on Drudge, which has worked closely with the Romney camp all through the primaries.)

And Ollie North wasn’t that interested in it, but practiced his new line, equating Theater of War with Political Theater. And reinforcing the “anybody woulda/coulda/shoulda done it. I’m sure that any black person could have done what Jesse Owens did in Berlin. And any black ballplayer could have done what Jackie Robinson did.

It’s just them being all uppity and dancing in the End Zone after doing what anybody could have done. (Oh, and did you hear that HE didn’t do it? Lars whispered conspiratorially. Some Navy guy had operational control. See? It wasn’t even him.

The uppity n…. oops. Can’t say that. We just say it with New York Post covers.) That’s why we needs us some guns.

MODERN MEDIA MEANS MENDACITY

Oliver North, convicted felon

He is, you know. He wasn’t exonerated, but his conviction was overturned on appeal, on the technicality that his testimony before Congress was “immune” and that the conviction had, in some small manner, been “tainted” by said immunity. Thus to the guilty walk free.

Remember I was talking about the deal that was made with the Ayatollah to hold the hostages until the election so that Reagan could win, and, if they did, then they’d sell spare parts to Iran for its war with Iraq, because all the hardware in the Iranian military was U.S. made? (Our jets, our missiles, etc. sold to the Shah of Iran to get some of his mega-oil bucks back from the Middle East.)

Oliver North was the bagman responsible for doing just that. Wikipedia:

 North came into the public spotlight as a result of his participation in the Iran-Contra affair, a political scandal of the late 1980s, in which he claimed partial responsibility for the sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to the Contras in Nicaragua. He was reportedly responsible for the establishment of a covert network, which aided the Contras. The Boland Amendment (to the House Appropriations Bill of 1982 and subsequent years) prohibited the appropriation of U.S. funds by intelligence agencies for this purpose at that time, thus the search for alternative funding sources. Funding was facilitated through Palmer National Bank of Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1983 by Harvey McLean, Jr., a businessman from Shreveport, Louisiana. and was initially funded with $2.8 million dollars by Herman K. Beebe. North supposedly used this bank during the Iran-Contra scandal by funneling money from his shell organization, the “National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty,” through Palmer National Bank to the Contras.

According to the National Security Archive, in August 23, 1986 e-mail to National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Oliver North described a meeting with a representative of Panamanian DictatorManuel Noriega: “You will recall that over the years Manuel Noriega in Panama and I have developed a fairly good relationship,” North writes before explaining Noriega’s proposal. If U.S. officials can “help clean up his image” and lift the ban on arms sales to the Panamanian Defense Force, Noriega will “‘take care of’ the Sandinista leadership for us.”

North told Poindexter that Noriega could assist with sabotage against the Sandinistas and supposedly suggested that Noriega be paid one million dollars in cash, from “Project Democracy” funds raised from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran—for the Panamanian leader’s help in destroying Nicaraguan economic installations.

In November 1986, as the sale of weapons was made public, North was dismissed by President Ronald Reagan, and, in July 1987, he was summoned to testify before televised hearings of a joint Congressional committee that was formed to investigate Iran-Contra. The image of North taking the oath became iconic, and similar photographs made the cover of Time and Newsweek, and helped to define him in the eyes of the public. During the hearings, North admitted that he had lied to Congress, for which, among other things, he was later charged. He defended his actions by stating that he believed in the goal of aiding the Contras, whom he saw as freedom fighters, and said that he viewed the Iran-Contra scheme as a “neat idea”. North admitted shredding government documents related to his Contra and Iranian activities, at William Casey’s suggestion, when the Iran Contra scandal became public. He testified that Robert McFarlane had asked him to alter official records to delete references to direct assistance to the contras and that he had helped.

North was tried in 1988 in relation to his activities while at the National Security Council. He was indicted on sixteen felony counts, and, on May 4, 1989, he was initially convicted of three: accepting an illegal gratuity; aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry; and ordering the destruction of documents via his secretary, Fawn Hall. He was sentenced, by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell on July 5, 1989, to a three-year suspended prison term, two years’ probation, $150,000 in fines, and 1,200 hours community service.

However, on July 20, 1990, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), North’s convictions were vacated, after the appeals court found that witnesses in his trial might have been impermissibly affected by his immunized congressional testimony.

That is the incredibly KIND version, of course.

And, of course there WAS actually a CIA cocaine trans-shipping project through Panama, but when Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News uncovered the story, the Eastern Establishment press snarked all over the California paper until it shut up, and stuck Webb covering local PTA meetings.

Nobody ever really asked much about why, at Christmas of one year, Panama was taken and Noriga whisked into a federal prison, incommunicado thereafter. But, that’s probably just a coincidence.

But Oliver North was run for the Senate from Virginia (he lost). Thence to radio, and now to the Chautauqua circuit and a weekly show on Faux Nooz.  Meanwhile, G. Gordon Liddy, Nixon’s Ollie North, sells you gold during the commercial breaks.

And he was on Lars Larson hyping his upcoming event at which Lars will be in attendance, so one presumes it will be a paid ticket thing: Republican ex-felonapalooza. (Oh, wait, that’s Sean Hannity’s gig.)

Funny how lucrative crime actually is, contrary to popular moral sentiment.

So, as wild geese lead the day’s attempted assessment of reality, Congress has only worked 41 of the first 127 days of 2012, and we can all take comfort in that.

It IS an election year, after all.

Gary Webb*

But you know, “spiking the ball” has another, more appropriate meaning here:

It is making a hole in a bladder filled with compressed gas.

Leaving the actual argument, once the puff has gone out of it.

Courage.

====================

* On December 10, 2004, [Gary Webb] was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head. Sacramento County coroner Robert Lyons asserts that it was suicide, noting that a suicide note was found at the scene. Webb’s ex-wife, Sue Bell, said that Webb had been depressed for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. (Wikipedia) Click photo above for Webb in his own words.

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog

Walpurgisnacht.May Day Eve.

The Righties have succeeded in making their meme more important than the anniversary whose celebration disgusts them so. Thus (bizarrely using — not for the first time this week — a UK newspaper and Writer/Blogger Toby Harndon to push their poisonous “American” blog linkages):

SEALs slam ObWalpurgisnacht. May Day Eve.

The Righties have succeeded in making their meme more important than the anniversary whose celebration disgusts them so. Thus (bizarrely using — not for the first time this week — a UK newspaper and Writer/Blogger Toby Harndon to push their poisonous “American” blog linkages):

SEALs slam Obama for using them as ‘ammunition’ in bid to take credit for bin Laden killing during election campaign
By TOBY HARNDEN
PUBLISHED: 18:35 EST, 30 April 2012 | UPDATED: 19:34 EST, 30 April 2012

Serving and former US Navy SEALs have slammed President Barack Obama for taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and accused him of using Special Forces operators as ‘ammunition’ for his re-election campaign.

The SEALs spoke out to MailOnline after the Obama campaign released an ad entitled ‘One Chance’….

Ah, see how our patriots swarm to the British blogger.

Happy Witches’ Eve. And the hangover will hang over until May Day. May Day, USA. May Day. May Day.

I wanted to talk to you about the Rovian sludge being poured out in this election cycle:

• There IS no war against women, you dumb bitches.
• Obama ate DOG!

See yesterday’s Hinderaker — ALEC, Koch,CATO — quote on PowerLine, that blog that was instrumental in bringing down Dan Rather over proportional spacing:

Politically, the most interesting phenomenon last night was the dog jokes. The President himself made three jokes about eating dogs. This represents a victory for new media and especially for Jim Treacher, since liberal news sources like the New York Times and Jon Stewart had studiously tried to pretend that the dog controversy didn’t exist. Obama and Kimmel evidently recognized that Twitter made such pretense impossible. (The New York Times, however, is still holding out.*)

[* "holding out" is actually damning, revealing as it does, the mindset that we MANUFACTURE the news, not that newspapers actually report it.]

• “Even Jimmy Carter” would have given the order to take out Osama bin Laden. (Mitt Romney, today.)

Romney on OBL: ‘Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order’  —  Mitt Romney, asked if he would have given the order to go after Osama Bin Laden, as President Obama’s new video and his campaign aides have suggested he wouldn’t have done, per POLITICO’s Ginger Gibson: “Of course, even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.”*

[* Which is a double order lie, since Carter GAVE the equivalent of the order, and Delta Force managed to blow up helicopters in the middle of the Iranian desert, making any further attempt to rescue the hostages impossible (they were dispersed).

Delta Force screws the pooch in the Iranian desert

i.e. the slur is MEANINGLESS. BUT, we recall, importantly, that the Reagan campaign made a deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini (the Osama bin Laden of his era) NOT to release the hostages until after the election. In astonishing timing, unquestioned at the time, the hostages were released AS Reagan was inaugurated, giving the fledgling administration a PR coup that could in NO WISE be considered an accident, and signaling, silently, that they expected their spare parts as "our" part of the deal. They got them.] The Washington Post in 2005:

Beginning Nov. 4, 1979 , dozens of U.S. diplomats were held hostage by Iranian Islamic revolutionaries for 444 days while America’s feckless president, Jimmy Carter, fretted in the White House. Running for the presidency against Carter the next year, Ronald Reagan made it crystal clear that the Iranians would pay a very stiff price for continuing their criminal behavior. On Jan. 20, 1981, in the hour that Reagan was sworn into office, Iran released the hostages… *

Having known all along that Khomeini was going to help make him president, Reagan postured in that old Cold-Warrior manner about how awful the Ayatollah was. Then, in office, the posturing continued, with the added fillip of sending Khomeini the spare parts to all the US weaponry they’d captured, to help with their eight year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. They lie to you with a straight face, don’t they?

Ayatollah Khomeini – Friend AND Foe?

[*The NEXT line is, in retrospect, hilarious: "The Iranians well understood that Reagan was serious about turning words into action in a way that Jimmy Carter never was." The line was written by -- or more likely FOR -- Mitt Romney.]

Rather than deal with Rather and dealing, and the reasons you OUGHT to be paranoid about the upcoming election…

• more than half of the first 13 GOP primaries were marked by voting irregularities and strange errors and omissions, including the famously botched Iowa caucuses, which, pragmatically, we learned last week, were actually WON by Ron Paul, who got the most delegates, followed by Rick Santorum, who got the most votes, and Mitt Romney, who was anointed the winner and moved regally to New Hampshire on a Golden Hovercraft made of cash;
• Mitt Romney’s staff purchased and then deleted all hard drives from Mitt’s tenure as Massachusetts Governor; today the Romney campaign declined to identify its “bundlers” (a first in presidential politics); Romney has committed clear violations of the law and gotten away with pooh-poohing them (not a Massachusetts resident or voter, retroactively turned so by a complicit, compliant Utah theocracy; felony handing out of “gifts” in Wisconsin, deep-sixed by the media);
• Romney has consistently lied about President Obama’s record in a blatantly non-factual, never fact-checked manner on the stump, and YOU aren’t scared of another incipient Nixon Administration, rife with paranoia, secrecy and hidden agendas? Good Ghod

… let’s instead take a look at four years ago, and, sadly, try to realize that we’ve learned nothing in the interim about the Rovian media machine that manufactures lies as efficiently as Lucille Ball’s chocolate factory manufactured chocolates. The country you save just might be your own:

30 APRIL 2008 · 4:26 PM

Walpurgisnacht: How Dumb Are The Democrats?

Walpurgisnacht, 2008.

You know, according to Pope Sextus the Fifth (or by his Borg name, Pope 6 the 5) or, Yogi Berra (I can’t remember which), the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I have been watching seemingly every sane body in America throwing the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to the jackals, including — at April 29′s press conference — Senator Barack Obama.

And while I appreciate the inevitability of the press conference — a chess move he’s been trapped into by the “rules” of the game as played — I understand that unless and until we stop allowing this cycle of demonization, denunciation and distraction to continue in all its satanic, bullying glory,

we CANNOT ever win.

It is as inevitable as a draw in tic-tac-toe, unless the opponent is a small child or drooling imbecile. The 3D GOP Democrat Confusicatorial Technique:

1. Demonize

Here’s the simple version: Brian Ross, Avni Patel and Rehab El-Buri at ABC News’ “Investigative Unit” run a “hit” piece on Obama’s minister.*

[* This is the first time, to my knowledge that the invisible line of religious prejudice has been crossed in this manner. Even poor old Al Smith, the first "papist" to run for president in 1928, didn't have to face this kind of slime job on his personal priest. Even weird old Mitt Romney, member of the somewhat creepy cult of Mormonism was not attacked, nor were the Mormons attacked in such a blatant manner. There has always been a dividing line in American politics that doesn't permit such attacks.]

The Rightie Blogosmear™ and their allies in the media attack, claiming that the minister, Wright, is a racist, an America-hater, etcetera.

2. Denounce

The legitimate “moderates” of the MSM, and most of the Leftie blogoclueless denounce the minister.

his timing [Wright] … is a disaster for Barack Obama
– Thom Hartmann, AirAmerica 11:36 AM PDT 4-29-08

or,

Reverend Wright and his crazy comments ….
– David Schuster (MSNBC Reporter)
substitute hosting on Ed Schultz Radio show 1:36 PM PDT 4-30-08

With Watergate heating up to full boil
Nixon went to Egypt for parades 

3. Distract

Just take a look at Memeorandum yesterday, yesterday afternoon and today.

Obama’s minister holds controversial opinions.

Hmmm.

But the Rightie blogosmear™ has had a field day with Reverend Wright, and the Left?

THE SAME DAMN THING THEY DO EVERY TIME.

Got it?

Wright isn’t perfect. Therefore, WE throw him to the dogs, and the rottweilers of the right tear him into bloody flinders. To wit(less):

All aboard the Jive Talk Express
By Michelle Malkin • April 30, 2008 07:33 AM

For the past 24 hours, Obama’s campaign too slowly grappled with how to handle the aftermath of Wright’s whirlwind tour of hatred this weekend — from Dallas, where he decried his “public crucifixion,” to Detroit, where he entertained NAACP bigwigs with impersonations of white people, mockeries of classical music and “white” marching bands, and lectures on racial brain theories, to the National Press Club, where he preened, strutted and head-wagged his way through an hour of bitter black liberation theologizing.

At first, Obama downplayed Wright’s public appearances. But Obama now tells us he had to wait 24 hours to convene a press conference to denounce Wright’s National Press Club speech because he “hadn’t seen it.” After all this time on the campaign trail, we’re back to the Obama-as-clueless-naif narrative again. When he finally did view the Washington speech, Obama explained, he was “shocked” and “outraged” and “saddened” because “the person I saw was not the person that I’d come to know over 20 years.”

What a load of pure unadulterated horse manure. Anyone with eyes can see that Wright’s performances are finely honed, time-tested acts. His anti-white, anti-American, “imperialist”-bashing shtick was not developed overnight or over the past few years. He’s been peddling AIDS conspiracies for decades. He’s been grievance-mongering about slavery for decades. He’s been flirting with the Nation of Islam, which provided security for his speeches, for decades. He’s been a shouting left-wing radical for decades.

Malkin is so PROUD of her racist, hateist* rant that she reprints her syndicated column, in toto.

The chiron has not been altered: it really did say that.

[* hateist -- n. a person who uses the bigotry techniques of racism, sexism, et al, in a generalized manner which changes matter as one changes an algebraic variable -- "Let x represent that subset of all people who I think are not humans at all, and, therefore beneath me, and let y represent the range of sleazy rhetorical attacks I can bring to bear to destroy x, and using hateism as z, therefore x+y = z. Let Michelle Malkin's blog be expressed as p, therefore be expressed as p = y to the xth power, or ." HW]

Meantime, playing directly into Malkin’s hands, the New York Times fundamentally ACCEPTS her premises, and even adds a gratuitous dollop of sense, which only compounds the magnitude of the Editorial Board members’ crime as collaborators with the  folks — witting, unwitting, or, most likely, witless collaborators, perhaps, but collaborators nonetheless.

Artist’s depiction of the Mountain Meadows Massacre

Editorial
Mr. Obama and Rev. Wright
The New York Times (no byline)
Published: April 30, 2008

It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and he made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign … Mr. Wright has not let that happen. In the last few days, in a series of shocking appearances, he embraced the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism. He said the government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill blacks. He suggested that America was guilty of “terrorism” and so had brought the 9/11 attacks on itself.

This could not be handled by a speech about the complexities of modern life. It required a powerful, unambiguous denunciation … It was the most forthright repudiation of an out-of-control supporter that we can remember. We would like to say that it will finally take the racial charge out of this campaign. We’re not that naïve.

It is an injustice, a legacy of the racist threads of this nation’s history, but prominent African-Americans are regularly called upon to explain or repudiate what other black Americans have to say, while white public figures are rarely, if ever, handed that burden….

What’s worse, it’s an injustice and the ” legacy of the racist threads of this nation’s history” that Wright’s points are denigrated a priori, without the slightest attention being paid.

Are you kidding me?

Reverse racism judo on Wright: photoshop from a hate blog
• 2012 – looks like it worked, doesn’t it? 

That Reverend Wright DOESN’T have the right to speak? That he must be repudiated by someone he converted because he has the temerity to hold views that run counter to the “common wisdom” (make that HUGE quotes, and add an extra double-huge set around “wisdom”) of the Main Stream Media?

Let’s see, Proposition 1: AIDS was developed by the US Government.

A lot of people believe this. It’s not just confined to crazy scary America-hating, black ministers.

The late University of Oregon alumnus Gary Shilts wrote of the rumor in his magnum opus AND THE BAND PLAYED ON. Shilts was the only reporter, for a long while, on the AIDS story, even back when it was called GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) by CDC and other public health professionals.

I was told the story in 1986 by late porn actor John C. Holmes, who maintained it, his widow later informed me, to the time of his death. He believed that he was injected with it in a mid-1980s trip to Washington D.C. (I must confess, I didn’t put any creedence in this rumor then, and still don’t buy it.)

Because of the Haitian vector and its entrée into the American black community, the tale has quite a following there, too. So what Wright is saying is NOT out of a mainstream, just not the mainstream that the mainstream “press” inhabits.

2010: Even though the “Tea Party Express” was a sham, CNN provided
their OWN bus to inadvertently or advertently lend “credibility” to the con 

But let’s take a look at that premise: Just because it doesn’t seem “reasonable” does that mean that it is absurd on the face of it? We KNOW that the CIA paid Sandoz Pharmaceuticals for the cheap synthesis of, and then funded massive dosing of LSD 25*, via involuntary dosings and “front” foundations that gave grants that funded research by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Baba Ram Dass) at Harvard, and sent Ken Kesey on his first “trip” at Stanford. Say what you will about “common wisdom” but the United States Government (or, rather, assholes WORKING for the US Government) unleashed LSD on pop culture and the world.

[* LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann (sic) died yesterday at the age of 102. The snarky news reports conflating the abuse of the drug with its discoverer suggests that IQ standards in the Official Propaganda News Consortium -- AKA the MSM -- have hit all time lows. While Hofmann himself stated: “Instead of a ‘wonder child,’ LSD suddenly became my ‘problem child.’ ”

Dude who discovered LSD dies at the ripe old age of 102
Orlando Sentinel, FL - 4 hours ago
The Los Angeles Times is reporting the death of a man probably responsible for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist who ...

LSD blotter tabs

LDS Communion tabs

REASON's headline reads:

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Deap (sic): LSD Inventor Albert Hofmann, RIP
Nick Gillespie | April 30, 2008, 8:50am

The creator of LSD, Albert Hofmann, is dead at the ripe old age of 102 (he's pictured at the right by artist Alex Gray). The man who launched a thousand trips first synthesized the drug in 1938 and then learned of its hallucinatory effects five years later, after accidentally ingesting it....

It should be noted that noted hack Gillespie is trying to rip off MAD Magazine's 1966 cover "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead," but seemingly can't spell "dead" correctly. Or try this:

Hofmann joins Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Brisbane Times, Australia - 12 minutes ago
ALBERT HOFMANN, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD and thereby gave the psychedelic generation the pharmaceutical vehicle to turn on, tune in and drop out ...

Etcetera. Note, "Hofmann" = one "f" two "n"s not vice versa. -- HW]

Now, consider that a bunch of murderous lunatics at the CIA might have unleashed AIDS in Africa, or Haiti, or unleashed it on the gay community. Really? That’s IMPOSSIBLE? Anyone familiar with the historical record has to admit that it is NOT as far-fetched as “common wisdom” would have you believe, and CERTAINLY within the right of ANY American to believe or speak about.

Normal

But, while I do not subscribe to the theory, that does not mean than I might not be WRONG. History says that evil crap like this is not only possible, but, in certain circles of Hell, probable.

[* There is a good discussion of the CIA/AIDS "urban legend" at Snopes.com, but be advised that it is NOT definitive. I am an agnostic on the issue, with a marked predisposition to the 'monkey' theory. But then, I operate under a much more rigorous epistemology than do most writers and journalists.]

Or, Wright’s contention that the United States of America had some degree of moral culpability in 9-11 to the extent that some of our foreign policy might have had a direct bearing on it?

Consider that Osama bin Laden and his Wahabist fundies considered that our airbase on Saudi Arabian soil was blasphemy:

One of Osama Bin Laden’s main aims is the removal of American forces from Saudi Arabia, which he says defiles Islam. (BBC, 2001)

OBL RIP 2011

Or, even could the case be made (which it hasn’t, and won’t be, legitimately) that Saddam Hussein was in any wise culpable for 9-11, our 1968 coup overthrowing the legitimately elected government of Iraq directly aided Hussein’s rise to power:

Published on Sunday, April 20, 2003 by Reuters

Ex-U.S. Official Says CIA Aided Baathists
CIA offers no comment on Iraq coup allegations

by David Morgan

PHILADELPHIA—If the United States succeeds in shepherding the creation of a post-war Iraqi government, a former National Security Council official says, it won’t be the first time that Washington has played a primary role in changing that country’s rulers. Roger Morris, a former State Department foreign service officer who was on the NSC staff during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, says the CIA had a hand in two coups in Iraq during the darkest days of the Cold War, including a 1968 putsch that set Saddam Hussein firmly on the path to power.

… “As in Iran in ’53, it was mostly American money and even American involvement on the ground,” says Morris, referring to a U.S.-backed coup that brought the return of the shah to neighbouring Iran.

Kassem, who had allowed communists to hold positions of responsibility in his government, was machine-gunned to death. And the country wound up in the hands of the Baath party.

At the time, Morris continues, Saddam was a Baath operative studying law in Cairo, one of the venues the CIA chose to plan the coup.

In fact, he claims the former Iraqi president castigated by President George W. Bush as one of history’s most “brutal dictators” was actually on the CIA payroll in those days.

“There’s no question,” Morris says. “It was there in Cairo that (Saddam) and others were first contacted by the agency.”

In 1968, Morris says, the CIA encouraged a palace revolt among Baath party elements led by long-time Saddam mentor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who would turn over the reins of power to his ambitious protégé in 1979.

“It’s a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States, and the (CIA’s) involvement there was really primary,” Morris says….

Gee. Doesn’t that have SOME bearing on those 9-11 attacks, as alleged by the Bushies vis a vis Saddam? And wasn’t the permanent US Air Base in Saudi Arabia (*which we talked them into following the 1991 Gulf War) a factor in the 9-11 attacks?

Or, one is tempted to note, the whole mess that “began” with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and which directly led to (through illegal negotiations by the Reagan campaign) the election of Reagan and the release of the American hostages after 444 days of captivity in January 1981, as Reagan was being sworn in. (The CIA had reinstalled the “Shah” deposing a lawfully elected government in 1953) :

The CIA Coup in Iran, 50 Years After

So, how crazy is Wright? Really?

Sane?

You see, the conflation of those WORKING for the US Government with the US Government with America is a fascinating tool in all of this, from a crowd who proudly parrot at every opportunity Ronnie Reagan’s ghostwritten lines:

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’.”

And:

“Government is not the solution, it is the problem.”

Somehow, suddenly, accusing that SAME “government” is being “anti-American” and hating America, and doing … what the Rightie hate merchants do EACH AND EVERY DAY.

Land-O-Fakes Butter
(for buttering up facts) 

But the flaccid liberals of the Democrat [sic] Party allow themselves to be insulted, allow these outrageous contradictions, these insinuations of misbehavior that the accusers themselves are manifestly GUILTY of on a Brobdingnagian scale, these shameless fallacies, mendacities and lies to pass UNCHALLENGED.

Each and every time.

You see, we LOST the “chickens coming home to roost” argument when we refused to defend the ofttimes creepy but in this case utterly correct Ward Churchill in his 2001 essay “On The Justice of Roosting Chickens.”

We were browbeaten into submission because Churchill had quoted an observation on Nazi war criminal Eichmann and the banality of evil by the selfsame assholes who later decided to buy Jonah Goldberg’s repellent book Liberal Fascism into bestsellerdom.

Where was the yowling mob forcing the National Review and the Los Angeles Times to remove Goldberg?

And where is the howling mob of liberals DEFENDING Churchill as he’s still being flayed alive in Colorado?

And how could we possibly defend Reverend Wright’s absolute right to speak as he speaks, and why don’t we decry those who would turn him into a figure of ridicule and scorn for speaking his truth as he sees it? Isn’t that what we ask of ministers? And haven’t we always been tolerant of religion in the USA?

[Er, well no. Ask the Mormons about Nauvoo and the lynching of Joseph Smith, sometime.]

Dr. Guillot’s magic wealth equalization machine

Over and over again, we fall for it. We react in the SAME manner. And, guess what?

WE GET THE SAME RESULT!

Do you GET that?

WE KEEP DOING THE SAME THING AND GETTING THE SAME RESULT.

And right NOW we have an unparalleled opportunity to push back against these bullying bastards who’ve ramrodded a national agenda of hate and character assassination down our throats with OUR tacit consent for a quarter of a century. But what do we do?

THE SAME DAMN THING.

We remain silent on Reverend Wright. We pooh-pooh his more “extreme” statements. We chide him for DARING to stand up to the bullies and sniff — a la the formerly reputable Thom Hartmann — that he’s just hurting Barack Obama and he OUGHT to fade into the background.

DON’T BE AN UPPITY NIGGER, WRIGHT!

(Say the liberal elite. Literally, the liberal ELITE.)

Am I hearing this right?

Good ghod, people. You keep doing the same damned thing and getting the same damned results and you WONDER why you keep losing to the Karl Roves?

You realize that this CAN’T be an accident, right? That while we’re arguing over some YouTube videos from a church, the Iraq war isn’t noticed. The Iran war precursor moves aren’t scrutinized. The torture authorizations aren’t questioned, and the kleptocracy for whom the major newspapers and networks increasingly act as official propaganda channels diverts us with bread and circuses.

1. Demonize +2. Denounce + 3. Distract = 

As long as we continue to allow them to set the agenda, we are not free. As long as we respond in the manner that they EXPECT us to respond in, we are not free. As long as crimes can be committed with impunity in the full light of day, subpoenas ignored, theft on a wholesale basis through “war contracts” taking place while they fire military auditors, we are not free.

As long as Kellogg, Brown & Root — spun off from Halliburton in a stock deal — can build detention camps in the USA in secret locations not only are we NOT free, but pretty soon we may well vanish.

Los Desaparecidos of Chile may well have been the idea of a CIA advisor after THAT coup.

1. Demonize + 2. Denounce + 3. Distract = 

If we want different results we need to use different tactics. If we want different results, we have to stop allowing the jackals to pick off progressives like Rev. Wrght, and yes, Ward Churchill. And Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Don Imus LOST HIS FRIGGIN job over a dumb comment. George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson tried to rig a presidential debate and they’ve still got their JOBS?

1. Demonize + 2. Denounce + 3. Distract = 

If we want different results we need to use different tactics.

You need to get mad. You need to stick your useless heads out the damned windows and start screaming (with hat tip to Paddy Chayefsky): “I’M AS MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

 h/t to Digby @ Hullabaloo

But you won’t. And you’ll sit and wonder why it was that you lost your civil rights and your representation. And you’ll wonder why you’re subsidizing billionaires when your social security won’t even buy CAT FOOD because of the devaluation of the dollar.

And you’ll keep doing the same stupid thing.

And getting the same results.

If we want different results we need to use different tactics.

Unless and until we change our manner of responding to the GOP attack jackals, the Hateists like Malkin, Hannity, Limbaugh, National Review, et al, we will continue as complicit in their human sacrifices.

John Kerry was swiftboated with YOUR help.

John Edwards was ignored out of the race and painted as a $400 haircut pansy WITH YOUR HELP. (*2012: And, it turns out, with a little help from his own extramarital actions, but that has no bearing on media coverage that knew nothing about it. The point remains relevant.)

Ward Churchill was crucified as the poster boy for academic jihad WITH YOUR HELP.

Omaha, Nebraska, 9-28-1919 lynch mob,
witnessed by a young Henry Fonda

Now, either start defending those on your side, or let ‘em pick you off one by one. If you truly embrace your diversity bullshit, you will STOP nitpicking, and start defending those with whom you may not entirely agree, but with whom you agree far more than you agree with lunatic hatemeisters like Michael the Savage Weiner.

Either we hang together or else we shall all hang separately. That’s as true today as it was when the LAST King George was hunting patriots, and Ben Franklin coined the aphorism.

First American political cartoon – B. Franklin, printer

Just like Scott Beauchamp in Iraq, all attack, none defend.

If we want different results we need to use different tactics.

Duh.

Well, I’m still here. The Reverend Wright is cordially invited to KEEP exercising his First Amendment rights, and I promise to KEEP defending his right to do so. And to keep chiding the cowardly “progressives” for selling him and everyone else LIKE him out because of fundamental gutlessness. (Sorry, Progressives.)

Just remember what Bugs Bunny said:

When They Came for SpongeBob

First they came for Bert and Ernie and I said nothing 
because I was not a Muppet.

Then they came for Tinky Winky and I said nothing, 
because I was not a Teletubby.

Then they came for SpongeBob and I said nothing,
because I was not an asexual cartoon sea creature.

Then they came for me 
and there was no one left to speak up.

— Bugs Bunny (attributed)

Kill da wabbit!

Courage.

=============

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog

ama for using them as ‘ammunition’ in bid to take credit for bin Laden killing during election campaign
By TOBY HARNDEN
PUBLISHED: 18:35 EST, 30 April 2012 | UPDATED: 19:34 EST, 30 April 2012

Serving and former US Navy SEALs have slammed President Barack Obama for taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and accused him of using Special Forces operators as ‘ammunition’ for his re-election campaign.

The SEALs spoke out to MailOnline after the Obama campaign released an ad entitled ‘One Chance’….

Ah, see how our patriots swarm to the British blogger.

Happy Witches’ Eve. And the hangover will hang over until May Day. May Day, USA. May Day. May Day.

I wanted to talk to you about the Rovian sludge being poured out in this election cycle:

• There IS no war against women, you dumb bitches.
• Obama ate DOG!

See yesterday’s Hinderaker — ALEC, Koch,CATO — quote on PowerLine, that blog that was instrumental in bringing down Dan Rather over proportional spacing:

Politically, the most interesting phenomenon last night was the dog jokes. The President himself made three jokes about eating dogs. This represents a victory for new media and especially for Jim Treacher, since liberal news sources like the New York Times and Jon Stewart had studiously tried to pretend that the dog controversy didn’t exist. Obama and Kimmel evidently recognized that Twitter made such pretense impossible. (The New York Times, however, is still holding out.*)

[* "holding out" is actually damning, revealing as it does, the mindset that we MANUFACTURE the news, not that newspapers actually report it.]

• “Even Jimmy Carter” would have given the order to take out Osama bin Laden. (Mitt Romney, today.)

Romney on OBL: ‘Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order’  —  Mitt Romney, asked if he would have given the order to go after Osama Bin Laden, as President Obama’s new video and his campaign aides have suggested he wouldn’t have done, per POLITICO’s Ginger Gibson: “Of course, even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.”*

[* Which is a double order lie, since Carter GAVE the equivalent of the order, and Delta Force managed to blow up helicopters in the middle of the Iranian desert, making any further attempt to rescue the hostages impossible (they were dispersed).

Delta Force screws the pooch in the Iranian desert

i.e. the slur is MEANINGLESS. BUT, we recall, importantly, that the Reagan campaign made a deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini (the Osama bin Laden of his era) NOT to release the hostages until after the election. In astonishing timing, unquestioned at the time, the hostages were released AS Reagan was inaugurated, giving the fledgling administration a PR coup that could in NO WISE be considered an accident, and signaling, silently, that they expected their spare parts as "our" part of the deal. They got them.] The Washington Post in 2005:

Beginning Nov. 4, 1979 , dozens of U.S. diplomats were held hostage by Iranian Islamic revolutionaries for 444 days while America’s feckless president, Jimmy Carter, fretted in the White House. Running for the presidency against Carter the next year, Ronald Reagan made it crystal clear that the Iranians would pay a very stiff price for continuing their criminal behavior. On Jan. 20, 1981, in the hour that Reagan was sworn into office, Iran released the hostages… *

Having known all along that Khomeini was going to help make him president, Reagan postured in that old Cold-Warrior manner about how awful the Ayatollah was. Then, in office, the posturing continued, with the added fillip of sending Khomeini the spare parts to all the US weaponry they’d captured, to help with their eight year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. They lie to you with a straight face, don’t they?

Ayatollah Khomeini – Friend AND Foe?

[*The NEXT line is, in retrospect, hilarious: "The Iranians well understood that Reagan was serious about turning words into action in a way that Jimmy Carter never was." The line was written by -- or more likely FOR -- Mitt Romney.]

Rather than deal with Rather and dealing, and the reasons you OUGHT to be paranoid about the upcoming election…

• more than half of the first 13 GOP primaries were marked by voting irregularities and strange errors and omissions, including the famously botched Iowa caucuses, which, pragmatically, we learned last week, were actually WON by Ron Paul, who got the most delegates, followed by Rick Santorum, who got the most votes, and Mitt Romney, who was anointed the winner and moved regally to New Hampshire on a Golden Hovercraft made of cash;
• Mitt Romney’s staff purchased and then deleted all hard drives from Mitt’s tenure as Massachusetts Governor; today the Romney campaign declined to identify its “bundlers” (a first in presidential politics); Romney has committed clear violations of the law and gotten away with pooh-poohing them (not a Massachusetts resident or voter, retroactively turned so by a complicit, compliant Utah theocracy; felony handing out of “gifts” in Wisconsin, deep-sixed by the media);
• Romney has consistently lied about President Obama’s record in a blatantly non-factual, never fact-checked manner on the stump, and YOU aren’t scared of another incipient Nixon Administration, rife with paranoia, secrecy and hidden agendas? Good Ghod

… let’s instead take a look at four years ago, and, sadly, try to realize that we’ve learned nothing in the interim about the Rovian media machine that manufactures lies as efficiently as Lucille Ball’s chocolate factory manufactured chocolates. The country you save just might be your own:

30 APRIL 2008 · 4:26 PM

Walpurgisnacht: How Dumb Are The Democrats?

I’ve seen this once before.

LA Free Press October 27, 1968

Back in the ‘Sixties, when we all believed that the news was actually “fair and balanced” and that the New York Times WAS all the news that was fit to print. And then, having ingested various psychedelic substances, the old Left realized that all the real news was just bunkum. And the great underground newspapers began, exploding from the Village Voice to the Boston Phoenix, the Los Angeles Free Press and the Berkeley Barb. We even had, in my hometown, The Santa Fe Sun, which was sold by hippies on Canyon Road, as a way of supplementing their brown rice.

Because, as became apparent, the “Establishment” news only printed press releases about how great cigarettes were and how wonderful and just the War in Vietnam was, and how noble the President (Johnson AND Nixon) who wouldn’t spy on Americans and believed in the First Amendment and people’s right to assemble. Nixon rode the Middle American horror at the scruffy, hairy Vietnam protests into the White House and we all know how THAT turned out.

Except, Woodward and Bernstein were not solely responsible for keeping the story in the public eye. The Establishment press tried to eighty-six the Watergate burglary, and dutifully scoffed at each and every new allegation that came to light. But the Underground press didn’t. They told the stories that the peckinsniffs of the Establishment deemed unfit to print and, in the end, the writers and spirit of the underground press were absorbed INTO the Establishment media and the underground papers winked out, one by one until a single large corporation owns nearly all of the “free” papers that the underground papers morphed into.

When I got to LA in 1976, you could still buy a Freep at newstands all over town. Within a year or so, it mysteriously vanished, never to reappear. (I later met the principals in that, and it’s a story worth telling, but not today.)

As, one by one, no longer with a monopoly on real news, the underground papers morphed into the “advertiser driven” free papers of today. (Again, my first job in publishing was in one of the first papers to adopt that model, working for Phonograph Record Magazine in the Max Factor Building just across the street from Sid Graumann’s Chinese Theater.

They’d gotten the major FM stations (FM was just undergoing its explosion) in the main markets to “sponsor” the monthly music magazine, which was then distributed for free in record stores and elsewhere in their markets. (Prior to that, you almost always PAID for literature worth reading, religious tracts excepted.)

And, since each FM station got four interior pages of advertising THEY could sell to either defray costs or make a profit, I was hired to come in in the middle of the night, and work long, bizarre shifts, pasting up the thirty-two separate four-sheet (two board) ad pages every month.

And that became the model for the free papers. The advertising paid for the papers, win-win. But, over time, the free papers have become as bland and characterless as the modern daily newspapers have. And we take our nooz from teevee.

The old establishment “megamedia” still define the narrative — of course, for years, lazy talk show hosts and teevee news took their cues from the New York Times, nationally, and when we HAD local radio talk shows (before the Limbaugh putsch), they invariably took their cues from the local newspaper.

But, whatever the reason, the old “Gatekeepers” have done us wrong, and everybody knows it, right and left. When they deem a scandal unworthy of note, it vanishes down the memory hole, with the most famous exception having been — ancient history already — Trent Lott’s comments about how the country would have been better off with Strom having won the presidency (in 1948, when he ran on the Segregationist ticket), and the MSM refused to take it up. A pointless slip of the tongue, it was adjudged, and it was the refusal of the old Usenet and the still-aborning blogosphere to drop it that forced it into front page news, with Lott stepping down as Republican Majority leader in the Senate.

And now, as the crucifixion of John Edwards, once the Vice Presidential nominee in 2004, proceeds for no useful policy reason but politics as spectacle by the inevitably prudish bourgeouis Establishment press (although, when you really get to know them, you would be shocked at how “moral” they actually are, vis a vis how moral they posture.)

Let me tell you a true story from Los Angeles in the 1980s. T’was in another wifetime:

My then-wife worked at a certain Three Letter Acronym network, preparing electrical equipment for a major upgrade the network was doing. And, in that same building, right in good old Hollywood — just about a mile or so from that wonderful police station that was so corrupt they decided that rather than try to reform it, they would just shut it down and send everybody to trial — the local  affiliate news was broadcast.

In cranky old police state of Los Angeles, the evening news was particulary vehement any time that there was a prostitution or pornography or sex scandal, and they went apoplectic on DRUGSES, resulting in high ratings.

The Male Anchor was one of an endless line of LA Anchors who never quite cracked the Big Leagues at network but who were well-known locally and did the usual appearances at charities and sporting events. He was particularly accomplished in spewing righteous indignation and sputtering outrage — albeit not with the Heston-as-Moses grandiloquence of George Putnam, the model for a generation of LA Angry Moral Men and Ted Baxter on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Said Male anchor was having a nooner in his girlfriend’s spacious and darkened windowed car, in front of the Three Letter Acronym building when a citizen made a miscue in Hollywood traffic and hit said girlfriend’s car. Since it was right outside, the news camera guys yanked out their cameras and took footage, which happened to include a very embarrassed Male Moral Angerman.

Said footage vanished in some irrevokable manner, but there was quite the hue and cry silently through the building, and to cap it off, they showed and reported the car accident, safely scrubbed of the damning footage that would have identified the flagrantes just post delicto, a scene that the Male Moral Angerman’s wife would have surely gone ballistic over.

Thus are our arbiters of news gatekeepers of our morality, without having ever practiced it themselves.

Which means, sadly, in the present day that we have to take our news from the “underground press” of the blogosphere. The media will be carpet-bombed with bait & switch “arguments” ginned up every day by the old Rovian footprint: control each and every day’s news cycle, and keep the “discussion” focused on your issues – look how well the distraction of the “Obama eats dogs” meme is doing:

Politically, the most interesting phenomenon last night was the dog jokes. The President himself made three jokes about eating dogs. This represents a victory for new media and especially for Jim Treacher, since liberal news sources like the New York Times and Jon Stewart had studiously tried to pretend that the dog controversy didn’t exist. Obama and Kimmel evidently recognized that Twitter made such pretense impossible. (The New York Times, however, is still holding out.)

That last is from John Hinderaker, latest Board Member of the CATO Institute, installed fiat of the Brothers Koch.  He also reportedly does lobbying work for his firm, which has the Brothers Koch as clients.

Isn’t that special?

It’s at the top of the page, presumably saying precisely what the Brothers Koch would like said. After all, they’re notorious for becoming piqued when someone in their “foundational” employ doesn’t toe the line … as the current CATO dustup is but an examplar.

My point being only that every form of media is overrun with media quislings, doing the bidding of their corporate masters.

If the presumptive GOP Nominee for President of the United States commits a felony under state law, on camera, isn’t that news? Somewhere?

Well, certainly not in the “Establishment” and “Bought and Paid For Blogs” media. Here’s an example of how media is bent to the will of the overlords by grabbing institutional credibility (presumably to say precisely what needs saying from a certain point of view):

… So what happens when partisans like the Koch brothers get their hands on an institution that exhibits flashes of independence? In Cato’s case, we can expect that independence to evaporate. They have already tried to pack the board with people like self-proclaimed neoconservative John Hinderaker, who once wrote, “It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.”

Does anyone think guys like that are going to preserve any hint of independence at Cato?

That was Robert Greenwald on FireDogLake. Greenwald is a very astute documentary film maker whose prior projects have done a lot to open talk about subjects Verboten in the Establishment press. Like the Koch Brothers, or the institutionalized bias and intent of Fox News in “Outfoxed.”

Just one more little example and we’ll be on our way:

… For the past 30 years, the Murdoch empire has sought to undermine and destabilise elected governments, and independent regulators, in pursuit of a political agenda that, while hiding behind a smokescreen of free market orthodoxy, is in the end nothing less than a sophisticated attempt to optimise the power and influence of News Corporation and its populist, rightwing agenda.

That’s to say low (or better still, no) corporate taxes, minimal state regulation and the creation of an aura of “exceptionalism” sufficient to convince and recruit many of the most senior politicians in the western world to either turn a blind eye or actively help the company to achieve its commercial objectives.

The strategy is well-honed and, as Murdoch himself once admitted, brutally simple. “You tell the bloody politicians what they want to hear and once the deal is done don’t worry about it,” ran one quote in Thomas Kiernan’s biography, Citizen Murdoch. “They’re not going to chase after you later if they suddenly decide what you said wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Otherwise, they’re made to look bad and they can’t abide that. So they just stick their heads up their asses and wait for the blow to pass.” [The Guardian (UK)]

Oh.

So, welcome to the underground press, which, while it may get out of control and crazy, like the old underground newspapers, is still your best shot at finding out what’s really going on behind that “Pageant” of the daily newsdaze and its Barbie® doll newsreaders of slowly increasing cleavage shown.

Just remember, Wikileaks isn’t anything new:

1969 Freep story that outed undercover officers all over the place

For better or worse, it’s what we’ve got left, since radio, television and print media all belong to The Man (or Men or Brothers or What-Have-You.)

Or you could take a look at this, which documents what I’m talking about:

Come Saturday Morning: What Fifty-Plus Years of a Business-Bigot Alliance Gets Us — The Modern GOP
By: Phoenix Woman Saturday March 31, 2012 6:45 am

… How did this all happen? How did it come to be that what once was the Party of Lincoln is now the Party of David Duke and Strom Thurmond? [...]

Courage.

=============

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog

Mitt Romney — or, rather, Romney’s handlers — showed his teeth last week. Not a pretty sight, orthodontists notwithstanding.

The invisible hand always leaves a footprint, though, and we can begin to limn the nature of the campaign’s movements and strategies, as they shake the Etch-A-Sketch and move into full-on campaign mode.

In APRIL!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

But there is a method to that madness, as well.

What have we seen of Mitt’s weaknesses in the past couple of weeks? And what has been done to alter perceptions?

Well, Mitt has been sucked into the GOP’s war on women. So, the narrative was, first, THERE IS NO WAR ON WOMEN. Then: Oh My Ghod! They’ve attacked MOTHERS! (Never question motherhood in a nation whose natal chart is ruled by Cancer, the astrologer would tell you.)

And then: 92.5% of all JOB LOSSES UNDER OBAMA ARE WOMEN’S JOBS!!

OK. Mission Semi-Accomplished. The stark division has been muddied, and the “War on Conservative Women” meme can launch, absorbing and deflecting women’s legitimate anger into being mad at that LESBIAN who said them awful things about Ann Romney not working and Bill Maher says horrible misogynistic stuff and he gave Obama a MILLION DOLLARS and Obama HAS TO GIVE IT BACK!!!!

And, today’s Weakness du Jour: Mitt Romney is mean to dogs.

Mitt Romney belongs to a religious cult that does not allow dogs to gamble.

Again, don’t criticize dogs in the Good ‘Ol USA. (I’m only being semi-Sirius about this.)

It’s all right. This campaign is not going to be run on rationality. It is going to be run on pure reptile brain. Obama SCARY! Mitt NOT a cultist!

And so forth.

But look at what the Rovian Brains behind Mitt’s fangs have ginned up as a response to the famous “Seamus the Irish Setter” scandal, and, significantly, we see the Usual Suspects working hand-in-glove here:

Bam Bites Dog
The political perils of personal attacks.
By JAMES TARANTO
The Wall Street Journal

… In January Obama adviser David Axelrod–not to be confused with Axelrod, the Flying A Dog–blew a dog whistle. He tweeted a photo of the president with Bo, the White House canine, in what appears to be the back seat of a limousine. Axelrod’s comment: “How loving owners transport their dogs.”

In a more serious vein, Lincoln Mitchell of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute writes at the Puffington Host: “For many voters, treating a dog this way is unimaginable and could only be done by somebody who has a problem empathizing with others.”

But then Jim Treacher, the Daily Caller’s resident wag, picked up his dog-eared copy of “Dreams From My Father,” Obama’s 1995 autobiography, and sniffed out this passage from the second chapter. If Axelrod’s tweet was a dog whistle, Treacher’s post is a dinner bell:

With Lolo [Obama's stepfather], I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.

It reminds us of the conclusion of the sci-fi tale “A Boy and His Dog”: “It’s a cookbook.”

Which is, in addition to the snark and the sleaze, literarily incorrect. Passing over the lack of ethics in giving away the ending to a classic short story, it ought be noted that Harlan Ellison wrote “A Boy and His Dog,” and its tagline was NOT “it’s a cookbook.” That was Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man,” which you might remember from the Twilight Zone episode made from it.

Harlan Ellison, not-author-of “To Serve Man”

And it clearly doesn’t remind “us,” since the amateurish error is entirely Taranto’s, as any superficial fact check would have quickly proven. (Ellison’s novella, “A Boy and his Dog,” ends with a witty pun on good taste, which is probably why it escaped Taranto’s memory, since, demonstrably, that is a subject in which he is unversed.)

Never let it be said that James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal was well read. No: Rupert don’t want no writers what read good, Rupert wants writers who write bad. (Or, actually, write bad good.)

Taranto sets up the false dichotomy. Then, quoting someone else, supplies the reptile-brain “counter-argument.”

The Daily Caller, funded by Foster Friess — who’s such a control freak that when the SuperPac he funded wouldn’t spent more money in Wisconsin a few weeks ago, PERSONALLY made Santorum radio ad buys – continues its role as a political assassin. Here’s the reptile brain argument:

Mitt may not be good to dogs, but AT LEAST HE HASN’T EATEN THEM!

OBAMA EATS DOGS!

And, I guess, he’s Hitler, but that’s a slur for another day.

But consider the clear strategy emerging: whatever your weaknesses, turn them against your enemy. (I don’t say “opponent” because the President is not seen as an opponent, as, say, John McCain still understood. No: Obama is the ENEMY.)

Being sold online

Women hate Mitt?

Obama is evil to women! He takes money from WOMAN-HATERS who use the C-Word! Someone who likes him said that MOTHERHOOD ISN’T HARD WORK!

Mitt has a problem with dog-lovers?

OBAMA EATS DOGS! OMG! (Panties twist and untwist, cue the Evil Barbie Corps on Faux Nooz.)

And just LOOK at the blogswarm of MEETOOs that was launched.

Lather, rinse and repeat.

Ask yourself who that invisible hand is, but don’t doubt its handy footwork.

But this is targeted media manipulation at the sub-rational level. It is utterly amoral and historically effective.

Your mind is not important to them. Only your gut-level reactions are.

If that doesn’t bother you, then fasten your seat belt, sit back and enjoy the ride.

But please don’t call it “democracy.”

It barely reaches the moral heights of demagoguery.

Courage.

============

UPDATE: Right wing tool Jake Tapper (of ABC News) helps to push the non-story, as though he were an actual journalist. Tapper has a long history of sleazy, amateurish stories on President Obama, going back at least to his “I smelled tobacco on him” bit of high-school newspaper journalism in 2008. Oh wait. No high school newspaper editor would have run that. I wonder if they’d have run THIS:

Apr 17, 2012 11:02pm
Romney Campaign Notes that Obama as a Boy Ate Dog Meat*

Much has been made about Mitt Romney, in 1983, putting his family dog Seamus in a kennel on top of his roof and driving from Boston to Canada, with said canine Seamus making his displeasure known in a rather scatological way.

Democrats have signaled they have every intention of making sure the American people — especially dog-lovers — know the tale. In January, senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod tweeted a photo of the president and Bo in a car, with the snide observation: “@davidaxelrod: How loving owners transport their dogs.”

The Romney campaign signaled Tuesday night that they are not about to cede any ground when it comes to a candidate’s odd past with man’s best friend.

And the Obama campaign shot back, with a spokesman suggesting the Romney team was attacking a child, since the Obama act in question took place when he was a kid.

The Daily Caller noted that in President Obama’s best-selling memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” the president recalls being fed dog meat as a young boy in Indonesia with his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.

[...]

*This post has been updated.

Headline. Young Obama ate Dog as a child, while Jake Tapper eats something far worse as an adult …

And, I have been (snarkily) informed that Taranto’s little literary trope is a “joke.” Which is funny since, in order for something to be a joke, it has to a) be funny and b) be funny.  If you have to explain that it’s a “joke” and not another clueless assertion in an article filled with clueless assertions and snark, then it’s not a “joke.”

=============

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted  from his blog

Welcome to the Etch-a-Sketch.

Now, if you’re paying attention, you just learned the Achilles heel of the Romney campaign. If you haven’t been paying attention, that’s YOUR Achilles heel, which they intend to exploit.

I speak of course, of Ann Romney’s dirty crack.

ABC News leads off with this Orwellian horse-puckey:

ABCNEWS:
Ann Romney Fights Back: Debuts on Twitter to Counter DNC Advisor’s Insult  —  PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Ann Romney’s debut on Twitter couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.  —  Ann’s first tweet came just moments after Democratic strategist and DNC adviser Hilary Rosen lobbed an insult at Ann Romney …

It’s only an insult if it ain’t true, just like it’s only libel if it’s not true, and it’s only news if the soulless imbeciles at ABC news actually used facts.

They did not.

The logical argument was this: is there a war on women? and, if so, is Mitt Romney’s astonishing assertion that NO, Republicans aren’t engaged in it, OBAMA is engaged in it (false 90%+ figure of women’s job losses under Obama). Oh, and Ann Romney is Mitt’s advisor on female matters.

Mitt Romney put his wife in the cross-hairs. Moreover, she was placed on the public stage by her own volition and by her ambitious husband. (This will be important later.) It was her CHOICE.

Ann Romney as she sees herself

In a season of mendacity, it seems a strange thing that so blatant an untruth, a lie, a fiction would pass so easily through the catamite press corps(e), but there you have it.

See see the “firestorm” on Memeorandum this morning.

Hilary Rosen, a CNN talking head identified as a “Democratic strategist” made the logical statement in rebuttal that Ann Romney was not in the least qualified to discuss the travails of working women and single mothers in this economy, including the “unfortunate” statement “she’s never worked a day in her life.

By this, of course, it is CLEARLY meant that Ann Romney has never worked in a W-2 wages time clock commercial job in her life.

But the mendacious Romney campaign (who have issued lie after unchallenged lie throughout this poisonous primary season) intentionally misconstrued the word “work,” so that Ann Romney could pull herself into high dudgeon — even creating a Twitter account to plead her sooty purity as a voice for vee-jay-jays everywhere — that she’s raised several Orthodontically engineered children, which is “hard work.”

Perhaps.

Working mother?

But clearly she didn’t “work” in the context the statement was made in.

And she and her lying husband and his Cthuylu corps of advisors well know it. The lie is clearly intentional, and the phony outrage is all the more demonic for it.

But we live in a Goebbels-style media age, and the “Big Lie”ers of Romney cry great crocodile tears that those awful Jews are abusing the poor Brownshirts by repeatedly smashing their knees and jackboots with their Semitic testicles. And, to add insult to injury, they repeatedly smash the Brownshirts in the fists and elbows with their eyes and noses.

And the “civil” morons of the media and the “left” go right along, demanding that Hilary Rosen publicly APOLOGIZE to Ann Romney for the “insult” to her hyper-productive genitalia. Which Rosen did.

I will stipulate that Ann Romney has done “hard work” in raising her children in the lap of luxury — even though that assertion, in itself, is probably laughable; but the mere functioning of her reproductive apparatus no more makes her an “expert” on women’s issues than owning a cheap telescope (never used) makes one an astrophysicist.

playing to the fools

The fundamental argument here is so laughable that only the criminally insane and those who have sustained organic brain damage could possibly take it seriously.

But no: the Obama Administration and its functionaries all instantly distanced themselves from Rosen, even as the Right Wing Smear Machine sprang into sulphurous action. As per usual, all the Righties banded together in their alibi, and all the Lefties fled the field of rhetorical battle, tails tucked twixt tibiae.

Has no one been paying attention, say, since George H.W. Bush based his 1988 election on smearing Dukakis as a “card-carrying member of the ACLU” and “Willie Horton”? (Implicitly, of course, that they were AGAINST civil liberties, as has been amply demonstrated in the intervening years — emphasis on “demon.”)

The functionality of Ann Romney’s lady parts no more makes her an expert on women’s issues than her imputed ability to drive two Cadillacs (at the same time, seemingly, a sort of Amazon Ben-Hur, astride the twin yoked mechanical beasts), or her assertion that, with nine figures in hubby Mitty’s account, she “doesn’t think of herself as wealthy.)

Ann’s two Cadillacs, ‘Willard’ and ‘Ben’

Someone is comatose here, and that needs to be pointed out.

Especially noteworthy are two sleazeballs at Politico, who write this bit of offal:

“There’s no such thing as a mom who’s not a working mom, so this was an unfortunate incident,” said Virginia Del. Barbara Comstock, a longtime Romney backer. “But it highlights some of the division that we’ve been seeing from the Obama campaign because they don’t want to talk about the fact that the Obama economy isn’t working for women.”

Utterly begging the question throughout, taking GOP talking points as gospel and pretending that they, in Olympian detachment, are “judging the facts” when their conclusions (implicit and explicit) belie the actual facts.

What we have to ask ourselves is this: are the reporters from ABC, Politico, et al so STOOPID that they don’t know what’s being pulled? (Hardly.) Or, rather, are they willing participants and collaborators  in what is transparent mendacity and Rovian lies?

We EXPECT the cynical manipulation of OUR civility to barbaric ends, of course. But, inevitably, we give in to Republican bullying tactics, and hide under our bedclothes while we wet our pants (or, panties, in deference to actual working women) in terror.

And it is getting OLD, people.

This entire phony controversy has been ginned up to distract from the irrefutable FACT that there IS a war on women, and four more bills were signed in Arizona and Wisconsin just this week, in case you were needing an exclamation point to drive it home.

But the soulless vampyres of the GOP/Romney Etch-a-Sketch machine know that merely gainsaying naked facts creates a false controversy, and, ultimately, reality — in the minds of the viewers of the swill that CNN, ABC, Fox, et al, ad nauseum produce like pink slime as a political additive to their rhetorical scheiss-burgers.

The Achilles heel of the Romney (or is that the Romany?) campaign is the Truth.

The Achilles heel of the rest of us, seemingly, is the Lie.

It’s really as simple as that.

I just want to see somebody have Hilary Rosen’s back,  and somebody challenge Ann Romney’s affront.

She IS a part of this campaign, and, having made herself a public figure, is undeserving of any special benefit or protection. She has to face the same political ugliness that the Obamas have (where are the cries of wounded womanhood when Michelle Obama is called “The Mooch” and derided as a mad spendthrift, behaving as Marie Antoinette in the midst of this horrible Recession?), that Hillary Clinton has, that every other man and woman in the political arena must face.

The “iron maiden” of the Romney Campaign

But, such would be sane.

And again, the Morlocks have shamed the Eloi, even as they feast on their warm, tender flesh.

Get a grip America, before we truly become Amerika.

A man who will say anything to get into office will do anything once IN office.

Or haven’t you been paying attention.

You spoke correctly, Hilary Rosen, and I do not accept your apology.

Because you had nothing to apologize for.

The truth is the truth: Ann Romney has never done an honest day’s work in her life. Vee-jay-jays and output  excluded.

Pity the poor multi-millionairess?

In a pig’s eye.

Courage.

=============

Personal note: Today marks my 28th year back from Boulder. Happy Rebirthday.

She quietly walked into the classroom from the front and stood there, just inside the door, against a wall.

I continued my lecture, unaware of her presence until my students’ eyes began focusing upon her rather than me.

“Yes?” I asked. Just “yes.” Nothing more.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” she said peacefully. I was confused. So she said it again, this time a little sharper.

“Ma’am,” I began, but she cut me off. I tried to defuse the situation, but couldn’t reason with her. She pulled a gun from her purse and shot me, then quickly left. I recovered immediately.

It took less than a minute.

The scene was an exercise in a newswriting class, unannounced but highly planned. My assignment was for the students to quickly write down everything they could about the incident. What happened. What was said. What she looked like. What she was wearing. Just the facts. Nothing more.

Everyone got some of the information right, but no one got all the facts, even the ones they were absolutely positively sure they saw or heard correctly. And, most interestingly, the “gun” the visitor used and which the students either couldn’t identify or misidentified was in reality a . . . banana; a painted black banana, but a banana nevertheless. The actual gun shot was on tape broadcast by a hidden recorder I activated.

It was a lesson in observation and truth. Witnesses often get the facts wrong, unable to distinguish events happening on top of each other. Sometimes they even want to “help” the reporter and say what they think the reporter wants to hear.

Reporters are society’s witnesses who record history by interviewing other witnesses, and they all make mistakes not because they want to but because everyone’s experiences and perceptions fog reality.

Of the infinite number of facts and observations that occur during a meeting, reporters must select a few, and then place them in whatever order they think is most important. Which few they select, which thousands they don’t select–and, more important–which facts they don’t even know exist–all make up a news story, usually written under deadline pressure. Thus, it isn’t unusual for readers to wonder how reporters could have been in the same meeting as they were since the published stories didn’t seem to reflect the reality of the meeting.

But there are some facts that are verifiable. We know that a South American country is spelled “Colombia,” not “Columbia.” We know that Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Republican. And we know that the current World Series champions are the St. Louis Cardinals not, regrettably, the San Diego Padres.

But, for far too many in my profession, facts and the truth are subverted by a process that has become he said/she said journalism. We take notes at meetings, recording who said what. If there are conflicting statements, we try to quote all the opinions, even the dumb ones, believing we are being “fair and balanced.” If  a news source says the world is flat, we write that, and then see if we can find someone who will say that it is round—or maybe square.

When we write features and personality profiles, we tend to take what we are told, craft it into snappy paragraphs, and hope the readers don’t fall asleep. If someone shyly tells us he earned a Silver Star for heroism during the Vietnam War, we don’t demand to see the certificate—or question how a 50 year old, who was wasn’t even in his teens when the war ended, could actually have served during the Vietnam war.

At the local level, although we’re trained to be cynical, we aren’t. If a mayor or police chief tells us something, we attribute the quote, figuring we did our duty. Maybe we ask a couple of questions, but we tend not to pursue them—we have far too many stories to write and far too little time. Besides, if the facts are wrong, we believe we’re “protected,” since it’s not we who said it but someone else. Legally, of course, we’re still responsible for factual error even if someone else said it and we accurately quote that person, but we don’t worry about the technicalities.

Adequate reporters get their facts from people in authority; the great reporters know truth is probably known by the secretaries, custodians, and other workers. We just have to find the right sources, dig out the facts, and verify them.

And now comes another presidential election, and we continue to perpetuate lies by not challenging those who spout them. Rick Santorum says California’s public colleges don’t teach American history—and we write down his lie. Mitt Romney claims he never said the Massachusetts health care plan was a model for the entire country, that Barack Obama never mentioned the deficit during his state of the union or that the President is constantly apologizing for America, and we write that without challenge. Newt Gingrich, like most Republican candidates for president and Congress, wants us to believe he’s an “outsider” and a fiscal conservative, and we go along with the fiction. Barack Obama said he’d be a leader for defending Constitutional rights, yet willingly signed an extension of the PATRIOT Act, which curtails civil liberties. Pick a candidate—any candidate, any party—and we think we’re “fair” because we record what he or she said, even of it’s a lie, a half-truth, an exaggeration, a distortion, or a misconception. Perhaps American politicians have internalized the wisdom of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels who said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Quoting people isn’t journalism—it’s clerking. We’re merely taking words, transcribing them, and publishing them. Journalism demands we challenge our sources and find the truth. As one grizzled city editor said in the late 19th century, if your mother claims to be your mother, demand a birth certificate. It was good advice then; it is even better advice now.

[In a 40-year career as a journalist and professor, Dr. Brasch has won more than 200 awards for excellence in journalism in investigative reporting, feature writing, and for his weekly column. His current book is the critically-acclaimed novel Before the First Snow, which helps explain the rise of the Occupy and anti-fracking movements. The book is available in both ebook and hardcover formats.]