You won't find anyone here who's been more critical of the FISA capitulation than I. I did my best to try to incite a riot for a week - and got troll rated for it plenty.
I had hoped that we could muster up enough angst to scare Obama's campaign and perhaps some in the leadership to abandon this vote by thinking that it was going to cost Obama too much political capital. But alas, for our Democratic leadership, no cost is too high to protect their masters in the telecom industry, and the national security state.
But as disappointed as many of us have been over Obama's reversal, there's some things to keep in mind. I didn't express this in the last week because it wasn't in our interest to do so. But now that the vote is over, a little perspective is warranted.
A commenter said that there are consequences to us FISA fanatics (my term), making fun of Democrats.
What are those consequences exactly? Seriously. For the last 2 years we've had the House and the Senate, and what have we gotten from it? More SYFPH.
What this FISA vote demonstrated clearly, just like the votes on the Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq war, is that on certain key issues, the Democrats and the Republicans are almost identical.
And this delusional strategy of continuing to keep our mouths shut so we can elect more and better Dems without being willing to lose a few elections will never have a chance.
We the people only have two forms of political power: our ability to get someone elected, and our ability to cost someone an election by either not voting or voting for someone else.
In game theory, this correlates roughly to a threat/reward matrix. You do good, we reward you with money and votes. You do bad we cost you votes and perhaps make you lose.
One of the most important aspects of this whole FISA mess has been largely overlooked. That is that it is not just about privacy. Or principle.
It is about political power.
The power of the Executive to spy on Americans is an incredible political weapon. Our Founders understood this even back in the 18th Century - information is power.
And if one has any doubt about the dangers of such power, one has to look no further than the presidency of Richard Nixon. There's a great scene in the movie All the President's Men where Woodward finally gets Deepthroat to talk. It is not, as far as I know, taken from an exact quote. But it is an accurate depiction of what Woodward learned:
Woodward: I'm tired of your chickenshit games. I need to know what you know.
Deepthroat: ... Mitchell [Nixon's attorney general] started doing covert stuff before anyone else. The list is longer than anyone can imagine. It involves the entire US intelligence community. FBI, CIA, Justice. It's incredible.
The cover up had little to do with Watergate. It was mainly to protect the covert operations. It leads everywhere. Get out your notebook. There's more.
A while back I sent an email to a friend and fellow Kossack expressing my concerns about Barack Obama. This is what it said:
"Obama has become code for anything and everything people hope to accomplish. The danger of course being that he will not succeed in even many, if not all of these expected changes.
"I'm guilty of this myself. I have no idea what to expect from an Obama presidency, and often find myself hoping for a miracle. But I fear when code-Obama is replaced by real-Obama, the one with real policies, real compromises, and real limits of power, a backlash will occur. Obama is the most dangerous politician in generations. He's dangerous to, at the very least, the fundraising establishment who are used to a receipt with with their politicians. Or he's dangerous to the people power movement because of the potential backlash if he fails, for whatever reason, or, God forbid, turns out to be a fraud."
THis is a short film narrated by Naomi Klein and based on her book The Shock Doctrine, which is probably the most must-read book to come out in years.
I'm not going to comment on it too much. I'll let the video speak for itself. But I will say, Klein's book is not just another well crafted depiction of how screwed up things are. There are plenty of those. This book, however, is, as Tim Robbins says, "a revelation". I've yet to see another work so completely encapsulate the dark forces shaping our world, and their origins. This little movie, while shocking in itself, is just hint of what the book contains. It is required reading for any citizen who desires to be informed.
The groupthink on display among the Washington babbling class is something to behold. Amidst all the rife speculation about "what Hillary wants", complete with pop psychoanalysis and endless tidbits of gossip, our beloved press corps appears to have forgotten to report what actually happened last night.
So, for the record, this is it: On an historic night, where the first African American candidate for the Democratic nomination for president was to give his victory speech, marking the official kickoff of the general election, Ms. Clinton went before the nation, surrounded by her most loyal supporters and staff, and sought to delegitimize that victory, and, the party's process under which that victory was achieved.
Put aside what Ms. Clinton will do, or why. This is what she did. And she did it by reiterating her same cynical and dishonest talking points: Votes for her weren't counted, and she won the "popular" vote.
Here are the words she used to undermine the validity of Obama's victory:
I'm not even sure if this warrants a diary. But I've searched the net over and have not found one reference to it and it deserves to be, at least, noted.
As we now know, Hillary has been going around invoking the RFK assassination for months. Even when she didn't use the word assassinate, as Olbermann pointed out, she invoked RFK's assassination just by mentioning RFK and the 1968 California primary. Robert Kennedy Jr., in a phone conversation from his car on Friday night, somewhat defended Hillary by pointing out that he had "heard her make that argument before". He didn't say when or where so, perhaps, he reads Time.
And, as we all know by now, if she were merely trying to cite cases of primaries running long, she could have chosen much better and more accurate examples.
A kind of political correctness has set in - "We need West Virginia. We need Kentucky. Calling them racists is not productive."
There's a point there, of course. Problem is, it disarms us of correcting a lie. A very popular and widespread lie. As Markos pointed out today, Obama has won a buttload of predominantly white states. And yet, as soon as we got into the final round, Ohio, Pennsylvania and beyond, a narrative was developed that Obama has a white, working class problem.
No. Obama has a white, racists problem.
This is a fact of life. I am from Tennessee. I have been to Kentucky more times than I can remember. I have been to W. Virginia more times than I can remember. As a musician and a professional traveler, I been throughout the entire South more times than I can remember. I was born here, and I grew up here. Racism permeates this place.
I just want to get this on the record while it still matters a little bit. I have a dissenting view of the Florida and Michigan dilemma. As much I like Barack Obama, I want Hillary to lose far more than I want him to win. Not because I hate her. Because I believe that her brand of politics, and her allegiance economically to the so called Washington consensus, is bad for the Democratic party, and most importantly the country and the world.
But as badly as I want, and have wanted for years, for the Clinton machine, and the DLC bloc in general to be extirpated from the Democratic party, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't express my views now, while the Florida and Michigan primaries are still a point of contention.
One of the few things from Bill Clinton's vacuous presidency that George Bush wasn't able to undo within three months of taking office was the progress he help foster in healing racial relations in this country. I have argued for years that Bill Clinton did more to damage the Democratic brand then a thousand Rush Limbaughs could ever do. His DLC, New Democrat inspired abandonment of our most fundamental principles--from the belief that democratic government is more than a shopping mall for "services", to the foundational principle that social responsibility is as important as personal responsibility--left our party lost and without purpose.
But there is one area of the Clinton presidency that left a truly virtuous and lasting legacy - healing the racial divide in our country.
I was so excited this morning when I got up. Yesterday, I thought I saw a light. Some may remember a not very happy post I did a while back called, Time to Tell the Truth About Global Warming. In it I explain how global warming is so much worse than most people realize because once CO2 gets into the atmosphere, it stays there, to varying degrees, for centuries at least. And I explained how even if we stopped the engine of the world tomorrow, and reduced CO2 emissions to exactly zero, it would not avert the climate catastrophe that has begun, and will continue to get much much worse over the next 40 years and beyond.
This is incredibly important because it means that the only way we can really avoid the climate catastrophe is to not only cut emissions, but to remove the CO2 we've already put into the atmosphere.
This is the largely untold story of how the Harper government, with the help of a television reporter, sought to sabotage the candidacy of Barack Obama. Many of the facts of this story are on the record, in pieces, from disparate sources. What is untold is how those pieces fit together into a coherent narrative. And it is only with this narrative that the severity, and maliciousness of this incident is revealed.
Ian Brodie was probably exhausted. "Budget day" was winding down and prime minister Stephen Harper's chief staffer had spent weeks negotiating a deal that would stave off an election challenge from the Liberal opposition. Now he was standing around chatting with reporters from CTV who were enjoying a rare bit of face time with the normally inaccessible Mr. Brodie. These were the circumstances in which an off the cuff remark would create an international crisis.
Oh what a mystery. Pat Buchanan and many, many others just can't figure out how Obama could have spent so much money and not "closed the deal." Is there something wrong with him? We need to spend the next two weeks discussing it.
This is why Obama lost PA:
(Note: I included a few allies in this graphic. They are exceptions.)
I was going to post a diary today on the ruling establishment and their agenda but I got busy and couldn't finish it.
So I figured I'd share a little trick with you all I've been doing lately, especially since the campaign flood.
The Rec'd diary list only has eight slots - which is not enough imo. This ensures that diaries with a significant number of recommends, which are a good indicator of quality or point of interest, will not make the list.
So I have a little workaround the gives me a cool list of diaries based on how many rec's they have.
The crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration are simply too many to mention here. And as the last week has shown, we haven't even scratched the surface yet. There are so many, in fact, that we've become almost desensitized to them. The accumulative effect is that our country, a nation of laws, has been defined down.
Even the most egregious have lost their bite when we speak of them. "Bush lied to take us to war" has become a hollow cry - I have to rephrase it just to restore its impact: Bush actually manufactured false evidence to trick the American people into supporting his illegal invasion of Iraq. That kind of works.
Bush violated the Fourth Amendment of the constitution and lied to the American people while he was doing it. Oh well, that's George.
One of my favorites that has largely gone unnoticed: The Bush administration manufactured terrorist threats to scare the public for political objectives. Keith Olbermann is the only journalist I know of who has remotely addressed this one. All in a days work, right Dick?
Currently, on the recommended list, there is a diary where the argument is made that we should be focusing more on McCain because, and this is a quote, Hillary's "already lost".
Now, I fully agree with many of the sentiments made in that diary, and those of Rachel Maddow who I admire greatly. Especially the one about winning gracefully. I believe wholly that the venomousness of some of the attacks on Clinton are actually hurting Obama and don't accurately represent the kind of campaign he's trying to run. And more than anything, we're going to need these people in the general election. So I'm all for winning gracefully, and trying to be like Barack and heal this party.
But the part about Hillary having already lost is both incorrect and dangerous at this time in the campaign.
You know, I'm just asking. Because the look on that little boy's face is really important to me. There was a time, I have to believe, when it was important to you. Are you really so determined to win that you would try to destroy that? Really?
Of course, Hillary will never read this, so this is really going out to the Hillary supporters who, if Gallup is to be believed, claim they would rather vote for John McCain.
Do you really want to be associated with a campaign to destroy what's depicted in that picture?
Am I the only one who noticed that, during the debates, almost every time John Edwards began to speak about one of his central campaign themes, corporate power and corruption in Washington, Wolf Blitzer would begin to interrupt him? Brain Williams at NBC did it too. Edwards could ramble on all day long, but as soon as he mentioned corruption, he was suddenly out of time.
Then, after Edwards dropped out, the eulogies for his campaign, at least in the corporate media, reduced his message to fighting poverty. How quaint. No message of corporate power or corruption in Washington. Suddenly Edwards's whole campaign was about poverty. You would think he had been running for president of the Salvation Army.
We're seeing the same thing with the Obama speech. In today's New York Times, plastered all over the front page of their 'Week in Review', are African American lips. Seriously, you really have to see it. African American lips. Suddenly, with all that's at stake, from war to the economy to global warming, and yes, corporate power, this election is all about race. Of course, the Times is not alone. While Obama himself has never made race a campaign issue, the corporate media has done it for him.
Ian Brodie was probably exhausted. "Budget day" was winding down and prime minister Stephen Harper's chief staffer had spent weeks negotiating a deal that would stave off an election challenge from the Liberal opposition. Now he was standing around chatting with reporters from CTV who were enjoying a rare bit of face time with the normally inaccessible Mr. Brodie. These were the circumstances in which an off the cuff remark would create an international crisis.
