1). FBI, other police agencies and their contractors don’t need a search warrant to track the locations of Americans’ cell phones, the Third Circuit ruled on Tuesday. It’s a huge precedent-setting decision.

Making a decision of so-called first impression, the Third Circuit (Alito’s old haunts) agreed with the Obama administration career bureaucrats and contractors do not need to show probable cause to obtain your location logs of where you travelled or are traveling. Probable cause has long been the standard for the government to use tracking devices. The court ruled that GPS-equivalent location information from your cell phone – although explicitly used for tracking like GPS – is not the same as actually intercepting a call. Thus, the government is entitled to access like similar administrative information readily available such as your name, etc.

The court agreed with the Obama Administration’s turning underlying statute and precedent inside out to produce distinction without difference re cell phones and Old School GPS trackers. The result is location tracking just called something else. A Roberts Court isn’t likely to take the case or reverse anyway. Besides, law enforcement are honorable professionals. 9/11 changed everything.

Go Team. (Decision here).

2). The Ninth Circuit agrees with the Obama Administration that U.S. contractors conducting renditions to possible warcrime torture in U.S. custody are immune. The court actually and specifically agreed with the Administration’s breathtaking assertion of State Secrets.

Well, obviously. It’s not like the government can be expected to produce a Lynndie England to take the fall every time. Clearly that’s an undue burden.

Can Obama and Holder pull off the elusive constitutional hat trick?

3). Yes! They! Can ! (Thanks again to the Ninth Circuit — again en banc).

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

They’ve been doing this for years. And so have their contractor minions. So just deal.

If you park your car in a gated community, have a fence on your driveway or otherwise are wealthy enough to wall off your driveway, no worries. The court ruled that’s a no-no. For everyone else, their trial version 4th Amendment app doesn’t apply.

Those who want the full 4th Amendment must purchase the Citizen Upgrade Pack to Amendment 4.0. Perhaps the tax cuts to the lumpen masses ‘middle class’ [sic] will help some buy a fence or otherwise qualify for the full version. (Subject to licensing and other precedent. Warning, this offer not available yet in all states. Beg audience with your assigned FBI or other State drone for offer details and conditons. No coupons).

Holder and Obama alone draw the bright line of constitutional rights against State Power and careerist, faceless, mediocre encroachment. Obama’s an expert in constitutional law. If anyone knows expediency, it’s him.

It’s not like Holder and Obama argued in FAVOR of bureaucrats hiding behind anonymity and expanding their presumptive entitlements over the hoi polloi. None of these bureaucrats mind at all, for example, if you film *them* in public making an arrest or otherwise exercising power in um, our names. So why should you?

Obama’s base refuses to see the obvious differences here from what Fredo, Ashcroft or the current Right Wing Nuts would argue. Neophyte ingrates. Under Fredo the filings would have been signed off by someone who got their law degree from Jerry Falwell’s TV studio. Here, Obama’s got Top 10 talent.

One can only marvel at Gibbs et. al’s restraint mocking Obama’s base in the face of such accomplishments. As the Administration so rightly notes among themselves, we’re not worthy.

Tweet This Post

WHERE: A state-of-the-art multiplex theater nested in the heart of an Imperial City suburban enclave teaming with massive defense contracting presences and nearby government installations.

THE AUDIENCE: Theater 45% filled, average age probably mid 50s, three or so younger couples in 20s to early 30s.

THE REACTION: A few sniggers and guffaws erupted during the movie (more on that below) followed by sustained booing. Yes, sustained booing from a 50-60 year old demo in mannered D.C. One woman in her later 50s yelled out ‘I want my money back !!’ She got energetic applause and more laughs. People jeered the credits, muttered to themselves, and left mocking it all.

We doubled back to the theater for other reasons and caught the last 5 minutes of a late showing. This younger crowd, mostly couples in their 20s, didn’t boo. But they did laugh at and during the ending. Departing they cheerfully chatted ‘wow that was really bad’ and so on. Perhaps it’s true, the young can shake off unpleasantness more easily.

ALL OF THEM TOOK THE HIT FOR YOU, DEAR READER. It’s really awful. And no, MSNBC, Clooney is not the American James Bond.

‘The American’ fails on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s really three movies: (i) about Clooney (“Edward”), a vague assassin without institutional or professional context; (ii) a bizarrely reverential tribute to a dull blue Fiat auto; and (iii) a sketchy romance between Edward and the winning Violante Placido.

Edward’s an aging hit man. He’s hip though; he often changes designer sunglasses. Running from a botched hit, he hides fearfully in a remote Italian town (pop. maybe 900). His possessions are some dufflebags and an old Fiat.

The flick’s MacGuffin? Edward takes an assignment from hiding to build a sniper rifle for a young female professional assassin (we’ll call her “Vixen”). She’s from The Big City. Her designer clothes and sports car say she’s hip, too.

Clooney meets Vixen who declares tersely she needs a sniper rifle firing a 5.56mm round at medium engagement ranges with a ‘silencer’. And smallish, like in a purse, please. That’s it. The entire movie stands or falls on it’s purported realism demonstrated through detail. Where to begin?

First, both of them fail at the outset. A 5.56 mm round wouldn’t be a professional sniper’s first choice. A well trained shooter can be effective at Vixen’s chosen distance. (It’s been years since we’ve used it on a range and we don’t purport to be a gun aficionado by any means).

Military or domestic SWAT snipers would insist on a heavier caliber routinely. A 5.56 mm round famously lacks penetration and lethal stopping power. In non-close quarters combat the maxim remains ‘slow, heavy bullets are better than fast, lightweight bullets’.

A so-called ‘lights out’ takedown with 5.56mm round almost always requires a head shot PLUS taking out the brain stem. A tricky two-fer. It’s not enough to hit your target. The two-fer is needed for a guaranteed kill. The survivors of 5.56mm head shots are many. Our two ‘professionals’ don’t even discuss the matter.

The first few laughs in the back began here. It’s a serious issue. The U.S. Army in the summer of 2010 just issued a new ‘green tip’ 5.56 mm standard round for troops in Afghanistan, the M855A1. For the above reasons – and that’s combat problems, not sniping. The A1 replaces the 20 year old M855 ammunition from the 1980s. (The bureaucratic reasons for the Army’s delay and experiments with an interim, heavier 6.8 mm round are an aside).

OK, forget the ammo specs. Edward does what any professional assassin would do hiding for his life in remote Italy. He orders rifle components via mail — from somewhere. His professional choice? A Ruger Mini-14 rifle. It uses the same 5.56/223 ammo as the M-16/M-4 assault rifle or the civilian counterpart, the commercially available and superior AR-15. But he chooses a Ruger. Why?

Yup, the same Ruger Mini-14 rifle on sale at many Walmarts and commercial outlets. Brand new? High end is around $700. Used maybe 50-60% less.

Edward can choose from a variety of still sub-optimal 5.56 weapons. The Ruger Mini-14 is notoriously inaccurate. It’s legendary for trouble holding groupings together at 100 yards, let alone Vixen’s requirements. Even with a guns smith’s re-bedding the action and re-doing the trigger it’s unreliable. A Mini-14 also has fairly loud ‘action’. Wouldn’t an assassin care? Edward short barrels it, adding further potential accuracy concerns. Does he select it because it’s all he has in his dufflebags? All he can get by the post office?

Several people behind us began to laugh sporadically by now. Surprising. Decorum in an adult Imperial City movie theater is pretty de rigueur. This audience really does shut off cell phones when told to do so before movie start.

Edward’s not totally passive. He puffs cred admonishing Vixen the rifle would fit a briefcase, not her purse. Bam! Step back. Edward then builds Vixen a wooden folding stock. But why didn’t he just mail his supplier for a Mini-14 with an over-the-counter modified grip and folding stock to start? Or if he wanted something custom, order an aftermarket commercial kit for $60.00-$100.00?

Why make this movie?

Second, Vixen’s suppressor. Don’t ask why didn’t Edward mail order it, too. Edward somehow produces a honkingly huge, beautiful scope. Either his dufflebags are magically endless or it was UPS time again.

So we suffer for art and witness Edward establish more street cred. He grabs kludgy used auto parts to make his own suppressor. Pretty basic stuff. The Interwebs are chock-a-block with guides. Amazon has a book specifically on building silencers/suppressors for the Mini-14. Household PVC pipes and ordinary washers, etc. are naturally vastly more effective than going Italian heavy metal automotive. Apparently, Italian mail can’t deliver generic plastic plumbing and washers from Home Depot or even Rome.

Per MoDo, Clooney retreats to his ‘Man Cave’ to build it. Edward pulls a Vulcan, timing metal bashing to local church bells. Because that’s what pros do. Edward instantly has a suppressor smooth as an iPad and it threads on like butter. He also intuitively knows glomming used Italian car parts on a Mini-14 will add completely absurd weight distrtubtions. No matter. A few tweaks and it’s right as rain.

Third, now Vixen adds to the stupid. More? You betcha.

She inspects her fully kitted out Mini-14 with gorgeous scope (nothing says professional assassin like a big, beautiful scope). Vixen then channels Forsythe’s ‘Day of the Jackal’. She demands Edward hollow out 5.56 rounds with mercury. Mercury bullets were going to explode in DeGaulle’s head, remember? Absurd then and still is.

Mercury is liquid at room temperature. Edward drills out tips and adds a dollop. (Yes, he now powers up a drill in his low profile pad). Where does he get mercury? Who knows? He’s in a nosy town of 900 some odd provincial Eyetalians suspicious of the sole American. He’s still BFF with the post office. Or maybe it’s his magic duffle bags again.

If Vixen is lucky and: (a) hits her target; and (b) the target *lives*; and (c) somehow the target is left unattended, bleeding for even days, then maybe the target *might* get mercury poisoning. Getting shot would be the target’s first and main concern. A hospital that staunches a wound easily deals with minimal mercury.

Finally, Edward delivers both Ruger and ammo. We’re lurching towards movie, er climax. As a pro, naturally Edward’s worried about a set up. He still flashes for both audience and Vixen that he’s too legit to quit. He displays the assorted rounds like candy: (i) green tip (NATO M855 for light armor/personnel); (ii) plain; and (iii) others, possibly some orange tips in there (tracer), etc. After all, what professional assassin wouldn’t want or need them?

Total cost, retail — probably less than $2,500 including S&H. Give or take. Oh, and the Samsonite ™ briefcase. Why does Vixen require an international assassin hiding in provincial Italy to assemble a commercial grade, inaccurate rifle? When she and everyone in the movie already have boatloads of guns they wave around with silencers? A MacGuffin, we know. You can see the plot ahead a mile away without Vixen’s honking big sight.

Churlish? In such a movie without any relationship contexts, detail is all that establishes character. Once the detail falls apart there’s literally nothing. The LA Times asks futilely ‘Why Do So Many George Clooney Fans Love Him But Hate His Movies?’ We’re not a hater. It just blows.

Unconvinced? This pro does push ups to stay ‘tough’. He suffers cliche nightmares/reach for the bedside gun. He takes off shoes to avoid cobblestone clatter. So naturally he goes to small bars and sits with his back to huge street windows. When he’s pretty sure he’s being followed. He takes a meeting in a restaurant afraid he might get set up again with his back to windows. He dines facing away from doors. But around a hooker on a picnic? He’s totally all over it, constantly handling his er, gun. Remember Kennedy’s disappointed reaction after Helms finally complies with a presidential request to meet the ‘American James Bond’ heading up Mongoose, Bill Harvey? Maybe the flick and MSNBC are the real truth tellers.

If the Bond movies (the good ones, before Ford) feature exotic cars like porn, ‘The American’ is fixated on a dull blue boxy Fiat. Shot after shot, the car itself is the focal point. Edward may make a public phone call but the Fiat lurks in center screen presence. Maybe there’s intent? Are the car’s dullness and typical Fiat build quality silent anti-Bondian commentary? Perhaps the car signifies both beginning and closure?

Alas, no. One soon realizes the shots are simply badly framed. The Fiat hogs screen time for no purpose. It’s the anti-Michael Bay school of cinematography for all the wrong reasons. At least no production crew are caught inadvertently in non-existent reflections.

Just this would’ve been a much better movie. Cut the assassin stuff. Skip optioning the book.

Put Edward/Clooney on an Italian vacation. Keep the parts where he meets the proverbial golden-hearted hooker (“Clara”). He’s Americano. She’s Italian. Comedic gold, no? Add a dog named Marley-gico. Imagine meeting the parents!

Focus Films is marketing ‘The American’ as a ‘European’ art house movie. Violante Placido plays Clara wonderfully. Of course, she’s required to spend 35-40% of her screen time topless. It’s European! That’s sophistication. Didn’t you know? (Clooney by contrast must’ve had a no sex scene clause in his contract. He’s variously under sheets, in trousers or pulling them up but otherwise safe from flagrante delicto (mercifully)). When Placido’s allowed to act and remain clothed, she rescues the screen from Clooney’s stolid non-acting. She deserves better. But then so do we.

If you must spoil the show, the name Clara has Latin origins from 13th century saints. There. That’s the real movie. Makes sense now, right? It’s *art*, after all.

Tweet This Post

Three years ago, Weidenfeld & Nicolson launched its Compact Editions series of classics such as Vanity Fair and Moby-Dick. The publisher explained that they’d been “sympathetically edited so that most of them are under 400 pages,” but that the cuts “in no way detract from the spirit of the original.” Surgery simply rendered such classics less “elitist.” Dripping drollery in The Times of London, critic Richard Morrison opined that truth in advertising behooved the publisher to adjust titles as well, perhaps to Vanity Off-Peak Fare, and Mini-Dick.

Any wonder that last year, two cheeky University of Chicago undergrads with literary parents—Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin—published Twitterature (Penguin), boiling down classics of world lit to 140-character bone? Here’s their speed-read version of The Epic of Gilgamesh: “@UrukRockCity—Great. That’s it. I’m leaving Uruk. My best friend in the world is dead, all because the gods couldn’t handle our bromance.”

The signs of readerly surrender pop up everywhere. Princeton student Isia Jasiewicz, reviewing a book for Newsweek this summer as an intern, admits in her last paragraph that she bothered to read only the first 10 pages. Linda Nilson, director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness at Clemson University, posts a piece titled, “Getting Students to Do the Reading” on the Web site of the National Education Association, advising: “Look for readings with graphics and pictures that reinforce the text, and pare down the required pages to the essentials. The less reading assigned, the more likely students will do it.”

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson is putting his action where his fiction is. He’s created a company to help re-invent the book for our fractured times.

[He's] been credited for inspiring today’s virtual world with his novel Snow Crash. Now he’s launching a startup himself: Subutai, where he is co-founder and chairman.

The company, based in Seattle and San Francisco, has developed what it calls the PULP platform for creating digital novels. The core of the experience is still a text novel, but authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video. There are also social features that allow readers to create their own profiles, earn badges for activity on the site or in the application, and interact with other readers.

One can’t help but be encouraged that Stephenson is trying. Still, we wandered through a largely empty Barnes & Noble this evening, marveling again that the vast majority of items on display were really products, so-called ‘books’ in masquerade. As the Chronicle article cited above observed, the book’s demise is separate from the sideshow of ebooks vs. bricks and mortar/Big Box-Style Outlets. Imagine all this same ‘merch’ enriched with shouting, braying, linking, tweeting multimedia technology ala PULP and Subatai or some other approach.

Scary innit?

Tweet This Post

His content and delivery raise alarming implications about who really will control key American foreign policy decisions ahead: his hopey changey rhetoric or David Petraeus et al. Obama reveals he himself is unsure.

We don’t fault him on Iraq or the need to go through the motions of praising the catastrophe. He’s merely following the Bush timetable.

Our critique rests on how he handled the military in this delicate moment. We saw a young man unsure of his authority over the military and overcompensating clumsily. Think the proverbial step parent with the skeptical, hostile teenager stepchild. Attempts to lay down rules are mocked and the step parent’s role denied – openly or passively. That’s his military. He missed an opportunity to correct things before a national audience.

Obama’s key message tonight was ostensibly his declaration that as we abandon Iraq we turn to a shared national reconstruction at home. Yet his avowed goal rests on a conundrum. ‘We will begin the drawn down in Afghanistan in 2011′ is a necessary precondition. But his declaration is really a plaintive plea. In the step parent analogy above, think a curfew issued to the back of a smirking teenager: ‘You will be home by eleven.’ Both know the reality.

Obama unnecessarily inflated the military’s prestige and thereby enhanced its future ability to obstruct his stated goal. His speech undercut his political agenda. ‘Conditions on the ground’ he concedes will dictate how and when the Afghanistan failure winds down. Obama should have made clear he will be the arbiter. A successful address would bestow fulsome praise on the military yet calibrate that necessary cant to preserve his hierarchy and aura as commander-in-chief. He didn’t. Obama is uncomfortable with power or using it.

Did Obama believe his unseemly obeisance to the military will induce them to ‘do him a solid’? Petraeus et al. will agree to ‘preside over a withdrawal’? If not, who thinks this Administration will find the political courage to pull troops without Saint David Petraeus’ blessing in 2011? Before a fevered election?

We obviously understand all presidents must paint by numbers in such addresses. Ceremonial tradition is important. We all here know together that every president since the rise of the Permanent National Security State post 1945 must ladle out panegyric chum to the military. It’s unspoken Canon Law. Especially for Obama without a plausible BOOYAH! victory to hide defeat. Some presidents do these State functions better than others. Even so, the tithing itself can’t be avoided. Especially with the all volunteer force (AVF). There’s too much national guilt over the essentially mercenary force in the field. Don’t we all see yellow ribbons in SUV windows at the grocery store?

In purely political terms, Obama’s lack of modulation unnecessarily undercut his status before a nominal national audience. He unwisely (inadvertantly?) cast himself as the callow, young supplicant, the inexperienced votive priest lighting incense for the (more mature) hallowed military. The subliminal dynamics are inescapable. One is the praise giver, the other the praise worthy. Such psycho-political dominance is more than internal theatrics and affects policies beyond just Afghanistan, ranging from Iran, a truculent Bibbi, Beijing and Northeast Asia, U.S. budgets, oversight, etc.

Did you catch the visuals behind Obama on camera? A huge portion of a flag featuring an eagle clutching arrows draped next to his head. Literally jammed at the TV viewer. Message: ‘He’s tough. Really! See the arrows??’ If SNL had the savage comedic instincts of its glory years, that would be in a ‘cold open.’

A skilled politician facing slow rolling internal insubordination would have used this speech as a platform to assert chain of command while still offering the usual ritual invocations. Praise the troops while husbanding his mystique as commander-in-chief, demonstrating his institutional authority. In effect, force the military to salute him.

He just can’t help prematurely flinching. No matter how much he kowtows to the military in public, he will never be accepted as ‘one of them’. He doesn’t demonstrate an instinctive understanding that his authority does not rest with the the military’s consent. They are not Praetorians.

A still temporarily powerful but declining American military in denial presents world historical problems by itself. Its barely concealed insubordination to Obama complicates internal dynamics as the military and overall Permanent National Security State claw to maintain Nomenklatura privileges over a manipulated, subjugated populace.

(As an aside, we always welcome Obama’s statements that American diplomacy and non-military assets should move to the fore. He as usual spoke glowingly of how American domestic freedoms are an example to the world. An inconvenience that his Administration continues and even expands the Bush Adminsitration’s full spectrum assault on the citizen and aggrandizing an unaccountable Permanent National Security State).

Ironically, the military itself would benefit from less presidential fluff and more blunt managerial direction. The military has not begun to grapple with staggering strategic defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan. These defeats call into question the fundamental institutional ethos, self-identity and nature of American military doctrine. As a nation we can’t allow the military to skate examination of their incompetence, prevarications, and most importantly responsibility for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents. The military as an institution if it is to avoid even greater strategic debacles in the future must begin the painful introspection. Insincere presidential praise to placate passive aggressive insubordination should not be used to help avoid the truth.

One speech does not a presidency — or policy initiative — define. His BP ‘address’ came an went in one 15 minute news cycle. Events will dictate more opportunities to revisit all these questions.

We saw tonight a president unsure of his control over self-interested institutions hostile to his agenda and the principles of civilian control and accountability. That’s a danger to us all.

Tweet This Post

It’s an unholy brew. A rootless media seeks any form of self-generating narrative for lazy producing, story selection, Nielsens and click throughs. And the Movement? It follows centuries of Counter Enlightenment impulsive tradition using public theater to create false narratives and communal identity. All fodder for the 15 minute news cycle and shallow tweets.

We chose to visit Annapolis to start off the weekend. Sure, it’s long been a tourist trap. And like nearby D.C. it’s self-satisfied, bloated and keenly aware of its wealth. Still, it’s not far up Route 50. The Severn River retains echoes of boating memories many decades ago. Plus, traffic to the overcrowded (and even more overbuilt) Delaware beaches too daunting. One notable thing – young men in their twenties lounging around the Naval Academy entrance wearing the old ‘Blackwater’ paw t-shirts and Oakleys. Without irony, too.

Where were we? Oh right. The high school play downtown.

The Movement today and over the past months recycles predictable motions from centuries of Continental Counter-Reformation, anti-Enlightenment history. Movements throughout history inherently must act out their inner narratives in public to survive. Why? Visual, ‘tangible’ public rituals are crucial theater and alternatives to actual pluralistic political organization. A public theater event is concrete manifestation of their inner monologues. The inherent unpredictability and malleability of public drama is an escape from dreary details of consistency, process and ‘facts’. The Tea Party and Rightists generally are stumbling through stale, predictable motions.

If we could ask a reader to leave with one memory from this post, it’d be this: it’s the theater that matters. Political theater confirms via *participatory* acting out both belonging and the intangible triumph of their shared irrational. Recall the shopkeeper’s words from a public ritual 76 years ago. They’re instructive. ‘Before I felt I was alone. And now I belong.’ That’s the Movement’s fundamental – belonging. Not ‘facts’, ‘accuracy’ or ‘truth’. If one gets only one thing about Movements across time, that should be it.

Substituting political theater for organized political structure allows Movements throughout history to surmount the *always* present contradictions. Anti-Englightenment Movements almost uniformly purport to be about ‘renewing’, ‘restoring’ and ‘rebuilding’. For example, all of them always offer an idealized, betrayed past to be reclaimed. Or a new millennium tantalizingly close but for enemies.

Movements market themselves in different guises but the above fundamentals are always present. For example, some Movements present a ne plus ultra modern facade and modernist progress. Regardless, once in power Movements always prove incompetent, incapable of rational management. The promised ‘renewal’ or ‘new Millennium’ lurched for through the destructive, ‘creating’ only by tearing down or revoking. The Bush Administration’s rejection of empirical governmental management for irrational incompetence par for the course in a tradition going back centuries.

Bartlett’s famous quote about the Bush Administration could have come from any Continental Movement:

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’ re studying that reality — -judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again.

Our media and the undisciplined (and let’s face it, largely ahistorical) blogosphere fail us. This rawer, cruder Movement in 2010 is nothing new. It’s core was always a major element of the Bush Administration 2001-2008. Yet all flail about clucking at this ‘new’ phenomenon.

Certainly Steele helps marginalize the Republican National Committee. The RNC and the party itself are irrelevant anyway — as we predicted years ago to you, Dear Reader. The parasite rejects now the need to wear the host’s ‘we play by the same rules’ institutional facade. Today’s public theater is merely an exclamation point that the Movement is an entity apart from and rejects the enfeebled pluralistic political GOP host.

America’s veneer of civilization, rationality and liberal democracy has always been remarkably thin and brittle. 2001-2008 only the most glaring and recent example. Our economic decline surely activates latent Movement tendency in some. And it provides vectors for viral contagion and recruitment for new comers. Some who are not ‘infected’ with the viral ideology itself will support the Movement anyway as a protest to a gloomy today and frightful future. These add percentages to the Movement’s presence. It, however, has always been and will be here. Consider: the unified Movement in power 2001-2008 was as nihilistic and irrational during a bubble of false prosperity. The anti-liberal democratic identity remains either way.

Still, things are not what they seem. That’s good news. This particular Movement in 2010 is mostly secular in its overt manifestations. It lacks the added anti-Enlightenment ferment from Values Voters and radicalized religious right. Both are equally as hostile to liberal democracy today as they were 2001-2008. Today, they are content to be grudgingly, passively supportive of the Movement’s current public persona. All want to see Democrats defeated and Obama erased. The 2010 Movement’s ‘secularist’ tint still is not enough to tap their enthusiasm. That’s a blessing.

The old Movement coalition awaits a truly gifted demagogue. One who can weave a larger, more inclusive irrational narrative. Newt toys with trying. Romney wouldn’t have a clue. Regardless, the rejection of regular, organized pluralistic politics means one should expect more public acting out – and escalation in ‘intensity’. Debates within the political apparatchik Republican ranks whether ‘wedge issues’ like nativist hatred of the Other (Muslims, gays, etc.) are distractions from the economic message are operational chit chat by professional mercenaries looking at polling data, get out the vote, etc. The Movement already rejected the apparatchiks’ dictate to focus on the economy. It slipped the leash long ago.

How heart breaking that non-radicalized American governing classes are just as befuddled and useless today as 2001-08. They still don’t understand what they’re facing, its historical roots and implications. Nor have a clue how to combat it. We’re all that proverbial movie going audience, watching helplessly as a character walks into the basement alone, knowing a monster’s in the house. Shouting warnings at the screen never change the outcome.

We need to change *our narrative.* Don’t we deserve better?

Tweet This Post

Facebook burps and random tweets send allegedly professional politicians and paid talking heads into hissy fits. Rightists play Democrats and much of their AgitProp infrastructure like a piano. Badly, of course.

Democrats seemingly learned nothing from 2001-2008. None of them, individually, their AgitProp allies or their (moribund) institutions demonstrate any understanding of ideological politics in today’s disassociated society of ambient social connections. It’s doubtful they will learn in time to forestall Revanchism. Such congenital failure suffocates aspirations and hopes of all non-Rightists. In retrospect 2008 was indeed a fluke, made possible by economic catastrophe, a failed presidency and timely story rather than anything inherently ‘Democratic’.

A feckless Administration addicted to expediency of course undermines meme cohesion and focus. Still, it’s no excuse for others purporting to be our Thought Leaders and Meme Givers to act like it’s still 2005 and the Movement controls all branches of government. Yet that’s exactly what they do every day, hyperventilating over a random Facebook burp or tweet airball. One insignificant flick and an entire news cycle is given to the Rightists on their terms on their issues. Over time, the cumulative impact is that what began as some trivial Rightist gesture dictates framing of our simulacra of consensus reality. The hysterical overreactions cascade like a signal chain in an amplifier until what emerges is nothing but distortion.

Democrats and their AgitProp allies truly don’t understand that the Movement could never have coalesced and reformed without their essential – and hapless – complicity.

Of course the economy is in ruins. A failed war is inescapable. We’re not unmindful of the political terrain. Faith in government competence and legitimacy at historic lows. Not all Democratic AgitProp allies are addicted to victimhood. Some focus on identifying new candidates and new funding for the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Until their time, we are presented a false choice. In the end, whether on the more gentle accomodationist curve of this current Democratic clique or with the spasmodic inchoate raging of the Rightists, we eventually arrive in essentially the same place. One just offers the scenic route.

Tweet This Post

BHO: ‘Let me be clear: it would be within regulatory guidelines to update this wall with 21st century urban planning.’

[The next day]: ‘Seeking regulatory permits to enable freedom in no way should be construed as commenting on the wisdom of doing so.’

________

2. RWR: ‘America will always be that shining city on the hill, a beacon for the world.’

BHO: ‘We must create new green jobs. America will lead the way becoming a 13 watt CFL Mini Spiral Energy Star Twist Compact Fluorescent visible in Trenton.’

________

3. RWR: ‘My fellow Americans, I am pleased to announce that today I have signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union forever. We begin bombing in 5 minutes.’

BHO: ‘My fellow Americans, I am pleased to announce that today I have turned over the most important element of American foreign policy to David Petraeus. David will begin prolonging the war in 5 minutes declaring he *reversed* the Taleeeeeban momentum by issuing a single press release.’

(Only one of these is a joke).

________

4. RWR: ‘How can a president *not* be an actor?’

BHO: (Pick any moment from the last 18 months).

________

5. RWR: ‘Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.’

BHO: ‘To combat this Great Recession we – not Bush – we enacted massive tax cuts that every non-quack economist warned would have no stimulative effect on the economy. To preserve the plutocratic gilded casino economy, we enacted weak, deliberately toothless financial reform legislation. We protected Big Pharma and the insurance monopolies with a watered down health care that does little to reverse outrageous price gouging and puts all meaningful change years away into the future.

To preserve American militarization and threat culture, didn’t I order that Americans abroad can be assassinated? Didn’t we expand covert paramilitary activity worldwide beyond Bush requests? My first defense budget set an all time American record. Who escalated the quagmire in Afghanistan?

Did I not make permanent the idea of Perpetual War at home? Who defended and even pushed beyond Bush Unitary Executive concepts of State Secrets? I gave a complete and total pass to everyone involved in torture and war crimes. Washed my hands. I’ve fought to expand the Patriot Act, too, and legitimized non-judicial, unsupervised NSA and FBI domestic surveillance. Bush’s radicalism is now normal. I gave it the patina and legitimacy of bi-partisianship. I made Siege State America permanent for decades. That’s right. I did all that.

Who continues to ensure the financial engineering economy prospers and offers just words to the poor, homeless and dying middle class? Even now? I even appointed two middle of the road, weak and unimpressive Supreme Court nominees to appease the Rightists. My nominees are no match for the Roberts Court radicalism.

What more do Republicans want of me? I’ve spat in the face of my base at almost every chance. Fired staff whenever Fox tells me to.

Heck, I’ll even give the Rightists Nancy Pelosi’s job. What do I have to do to keep mine?’

Did we miss anything?

Tweet This Post

If you remember . . . had fun this weekend with old friends.

Tweet This Post

Tweet This Post

MSNBC, like Oceania, has always been anti-war. So we get Tweety, who only stopped fluffing Neocons, DeLay et al. and the Administration in September 2006. MSNBC’s fabricated narrative is every bit as insidious and corruptive as that peddled by the Neocons and the Bush Administration. If the MSNBC third stringers want to pose and pretend they are going to hold people accountable, how about starting with their own network? Why is is that Tim Russert was Dick Cheney’s favorite (easiest) interview as Mary Matalin let slip? How many retired generals – oops, Senior Mentors — did MSNBC put on to explain how painless it was all going to be?

It’s a bit astounding to see Laurence O’Donnell – who, if you didn’t know, once was a staff director on a senate committee – repeatedly interrupt Jack Jacob’s military critique not just of the occupation but the half-assed and almost calamitous Rumsfeld/Franks invasion plan itself. (We’ve talked about the operational and logistical near disasters at length elsewhere). MSNBC is comfortable with that distinction – the ‘war’ went great (as all the then media cheerleaders still broadcasting need to believe) but the occupation was a bungle. Jacobs wasn’t having any of it but was cut off. Instead, we get a former Senate staffer babbling about how Americans vacation in Vietnam today, and wouldn’t it be nice if that happened too in a future Iraq. (By the way, Jacobs went to Vietnam after combat troops were withdrawn and saw combat every day; he is also is the first to underscore Vietnam is not Iraq re above).

The entire night was stunt journalism pornography at its worst, devoid almost entirely of real insight. No effort at all to put in context if this is the sad, pathetic end to the Warlord’s Operation Iraqi Excellent Adventure, what was MSNBC’s role in getting it going? Who did they put on air? Repeatedly? If MSNBC wants to be the Obama Administration’s version of Fox that’s their business and ethical call. The American people, however, rightly should and must remember MSNBC and those who so lustily shouted down doubt and criticism during the run-up.

We’re just going to say it a bluntly as we can: MSNBC, you, too, have blood on your hands. You’re just too mindless and irresponsible to notice.

Tweet This Post