It’s difficult to watch hecklers, even when you agree with them. On a superficial level they are rude. By interrupting formal speeches they are preventing the officially designated speaker from delivering his or her message.

But what alternatives do we have when modern-day powerful politicians carefully exclude people who disagree with the speaker? Here’s the modern formula for political mind-control:

1.    Inept/corrupt politician talks to a large audience; and
2.     Audience warmly applauds the long stream of BS.; and
3.    There is no hint of any dissent.

This combination has worked wonders for George W. Bush.  Time and time again, he speaks only to a pre-filtered and therefore friendly audience that, in reality, represents only 20% of America.   And consider that Bush almost always speaks before private audiences, where dissenters can be excluded even more easily.   When Bush dares to stray out in front of an audience that he has not hand-picked, he gets roundly booed.   John McCain is now picking up where Bush left off by giving most of his speeches before highly screened audiences.

I’d like to take this moment to appreciate the efforts of at least some hecklers.   First of all, take a look at this video of John McCain being heckled at the recent conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.  The hecklers were accusing McCain of being a war criminal.  Admittedly, these are harsh words, truly.  And, again, this is a rude display.  But there are good reasons to think that anyone supporting military action in Iraq did so illegally and that these illegal acts have caused hundreds of thousands of people to die and millions of people to be permanently displaced from their homes.  Hence, the accusation “war criminal.”

Consider what happens at events where there are no hecklers while McCain touts his war-monger ideas.  Consider, first, that humans are a species of animals that run in herds. We are emotionally attracted to people who appear to be liked by lots of other people.  Consider, also, that polite silence appears to constitute approval.  When ideas are stated repeatedly yet unopposed, we see them as even more credible than they are.

And here is a point that is critically important:  when even a single member of a group speaks up in dissent, it makes it much less likely that an audience member will feel pressured to fall in line with the other members of the group. This effect was thoroughly demonstrated in the 1950’s through a series of experiments by social scientist Solomon Asch.

Excluding potential audience members, a trick at which conservatives excel, works a fraud on everyone attending the speech and everyone viewing it later on a video.  What else would you assume when a huge audience graciously listened while McCain promoted war-mongering?  We presume that audiences constitute a cross-section of the public at large.  This fraud is further perpetuated when we are not also shown videos of the numerous techniques used by political operatives to pre-filter an audience to make sure that the audience was thoroughly friendly?

Finally, notice how the television commentator framed the people protesting McCain in the above video. Perhaps “protester” would be the most neutral word for someone who shouted words of protest at a war-monger who tried to exclude people of dissenting viewpoints from his audience.   Instead, the commentator used the word “heckler,” a word that suggests incorrectness, and it suggests that most of the people who sat quietly agreed with McCain’s speech.

For the grand finale, of course, the “heckler” is usually escorted off the stage by law enforcement officials, suggesting that the heckler is a law-breaker, even when the heckler is often bravely and patriotically making sure that we don’t fall prey to the illusion of the “thoroughly happy audience.”

Too bad we can’t heckle the corporate broadcast media.  How different things might be if someone could pop up next to a television news desk and yell a few words of dissent . . .

This testimony by John Yoo is disgraceful on many levels.   Yoo was commenting (or, rather, refusing to comment) on his previous “work” in Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.  Of course, in this Think Progress video, Yoo is doing his best to uphold the disgraceful actions of his former boss, George W. Bush.  He’s doing this by refusing to answer a simple question.

Andrew Sullivan adds this footnote.

Climate scientist James Hansen has recently argued that “fossil fuel “CEO’s should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature”. Why?  Because they know exactly what they are doing.  They are profit-fueled deniers, just like those big corporations who still push cigarettes while denying the well-known strong link between cancer and smoking.

Here are some of the wretched techniques of the fossil fuel corporations, according to Hansen:

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

Kirk Murphy of Firedoglake sums up Hansen’s latest statement nicely.   Here’s Murphy’s conclusion:

Thanks to Dr. Hansen and thousands of other honest scientists around the world, we know what to do. For twenty years, we’ve known about the problem. We can all be part of the solution, and part of the changes required to preserve our living world in a form that will support the wonderful diversity it supports — including our children and their children. Part our work is to support the 100% carbon tax and whenever possible, shrink our personal carbon footprints. Part of our work is to shut the climate change deniers out of mainstream discussion — in precisely the fashion civilized people now shut Holocaust deniers out of mainstream discussion and mainstream media.

What happens when the executive branch is allowed to operate in secrecy and without constraint? This was answered in 1976, by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church:

The natural tendency of Government is toward abuse of power. Men entrusted with power, even those aware of its dangers, tend, particularly when pressured, to slight liberty. Our constitutional system guards against this tendency. It establishes many different checks upon power. It is those wise restraints which ‘keep men free. In the field of intelligence those restraints have too often been ignored.

The three main departures in the intelligence field from the constitutional plan for controlling abuse of power have been: (a) Excessive Executive Power.

In a sense the growth of domestic intelligence activities mirrored the growth of presidential power generally. But more than any other activity, more even than exercise of the war power, intelligence activities have been left to the control of the Executive.

For decades Congress and the courts as well as the press and the public have accepted the notion that the control of intelligence activities was the exclusive prerogative of the Chief Executive and his surrogates. The exercise of this power was not questioned or even inquired into by outsiders. Indeed, at times the power was seen as flowing not from the law, but as inherent, in the Presidency.

Whatever the theory, the fact was that intelligence activities were essentially exempted from the normal system of checks and balances. Such Executive power, not founded in law or checked by Congress or the courts, contained the seeds of abuse and its growth was to be expected.

(b) Excessive Secrecy.

Abuse thrives on secrecy. Obviously, public disclosure, of matters such as the names of intelligence agents or the technological details of collection methods is inappropriate. But in the field of intelligence, secrecy has been extended to inhibit review of the basic programs and practices themselves.

Those within the Executive branch and the Congress who would exercise their responsibilities wisely must be fully informed. The American public, as well, should know enough about intelligence activities to be able to apply its good sense to the underlying issues of policy and morality.

Knowledge is the key to control. Secrecy should no longer be allowed to shield the existence of constitutional, legal and moral problems from the scrutiny of all three branches of government or from the American people themselves.

(c) Avoidance of the Rule of Law.

Lawlessness by Government breeds corrosive cynicism among the people and erodes the trust upon which government depends.

Here, there is no sovereign who stands above the law. Each of us, from presidents to the most disadvantaged citizen, must obey the law. As intelligence operations developed, however, rationalizations were fashioned to immunize them from the restraints of the Bill of Rights and the specific prohibitions of the criminal code. The experience of our investigation leads us to conclude that such rationalizations are a dangerous delusion.

As you can see, the Committee pointed its finger at the government, the public and the press.  Attitudes needed to be changed all around.

This is yet another parallel between modern times and the the Vietnam War era (I realize that that war had ceased by 1976).  Many other parallels were detailed by the movie “War Made Easy.”

The above passage is analyzed in more detail at Common Dreams.

In 1964, Rudolph Dreikurs wrote a child psychology book that is still considered a classic by child psychologist: Children: the Challenge. Dreikurs argued that using punishments to change behavior is inefficient.

No amount of punishment will bring about lasting submission. Confused and bewildered parents mistakenly hope that punishment will eventually bring results, without realizing that they are actually getting nowhere with their methods or, at best, they gain only temporary results from punishment. When the same punishment has to be repeated again and again, it should be obvious that it does not work. The use of punishment only helps the child to develop greater power of resistance in defiance.

Dreikurs argued that the authoritative idea of using punishment needs to be replaced with a sense of mutual respect and cooperation. Children need real leadership. “A good leader inspires and stimulates his followers into action that suits the situation.” It is important to arrange the learning situation such that a child learns “without a show of power, for power insights rebellion and defeats the purpose of child-raising.”

Dreikurs also cautions parents about using rewards:

The system of rewarding children for good behavior is as detrimental to their outlook as a system of punishment. The same lack of respect is shown. We “reward” our inferiors for favors or for good deeds. In a system of mutual respect among equals, a job is done because it needs doing, and the satisfaction, for the harmony of two people doing a job together…. satisfaction comes from a sense of contribution and participation-a sense actually denied to our children in our present system of rewarding them with material things. And our mistaken efforts to win cooperation through rewards, we are actually denying our children the basic satisfactions of living.

Since neither reward nor punishment is effective, what does Dreikurs suggest? He suggests using an approach he terms “natural consequences.”

Natural consequences” represent the pressure of reality without any specific action by parents and are always effective … What would be the natural consequence of forgetting one’s lunch? One would go hungry…. the idea of letting a child go hungry is horrifying to many parents. Actually, it is unpleasant to be hungry. But one missed lunch now and then is not going to cause bodily harm, and the discomfort may be effective in stimulating [the child] to remember to take his lunch with him…. we do not have the right to assume the responsibilities of her children, nor do we have the right to take the consequences of their acts. These belong to them.

I agree with Dreikurs. As a parent, I have become tuned to the existence of many styles of parenting. I have come to learn that rewards and punishments do not create responsible children. Instead, they create extended co-dependencies.

As I read Dreikurs book, I was reminded that our government constantly tries to regulate behavior through the inefficient methods of rewards and punishments, resulting in the same problems that result in a household that utilizes these approaches.

Our government has also evolved to do something far more insidious: hiding natural consequences from the citizens. Take Iraq, as one example. We don’t see caskets of our soldiers. We don’t see the mayhem still occurring in Iraq. The United States government and the corporate media work hard to protect us from these terrible images. This lack of information means that the citizens are protected from knowing the “natural consequences” of funding military action in Iraq.

We have been protected from knowing hundreds of other important things, as well, including government spying and government doctoring of scientific reports. The government, aided by an over-consolidated corporate media work hard to pump out lots of news and ads that hypnotize us to believe that the best way to be happy is to buy expensive things we don’t need. We are encouraged to over-consume, over-spend and over-trust the government. If you don’t believe me, pick up any episode of your daily “news”-paper or watch any episode of your local “news.” As a result of the lack of good information, we are now facing multiple terrifying economic, energy and environmental crises. We have been protected from the natural consequences and, therefore, we don’t know enough to change our ways. (more…)

The list has grown too long to ignore.  We are a country that exercises almost no foresight.  We wait for disasters to occur and only then (if then) does it occur to us to do something about the problem.

Here’s an especially heinous example: our government hires numerous financial experts, of course.  Alan Greenspan was one of them.  Why couldn’t any of them see the subprime disaster long before it occurred?  Instead, our government’s experts allowed unscrupulous mortgage companies to lend out far too much money to homeowners in the form of “exploding ARMs” such that it was entirely predictable that the borrowers would fall behind on their payments after only a few years, and that many would lose their homes through foreclosure.  Our government stood by while these loans were hyper-securitized to the point where the unscrupulous mortgage companies would go belly up, tranch-laden real estate trusts (who ultimately purchased the loans) would throw their hands and claim that they were innocent and Wall Street would laugh all the way to the bank.  That is, until Wall Street failed and successfully begged the federal government to bail out Bear Stearns.  All of this was entirely foreseeable.  The real disaster is that we failed to use our brains.

For another example, think of the Minnesota Bridge collapse. Let’s see… what might happen if you don’t allocate proper federal funding to fund sufficient bridge inspections?  Of course, it’s only after a huge bridge collapses or a major levee breaks that we start thinking about the resulting disasters here in America.

Do you want another example?  There are hundreds.

Remember when our president manufactured the need to go to war and all of the allegedly patriotic people (including many of your neighbors and friends, I’m sure) imposed group-think upon each other?  Voices trying to raise important concerns and objections were muzzled in the name of “freedom.”  What were we thinking?  That we were better off to parrot the President?  What we got is what we deserved: the low point was when Colin Powell lied to the American people, who patriotically nodded affirmatively, encouraged by their patriotic daily newspapers from coast to coast.  In retrospect, who couldn’t see that this type of “patriotic” group-think behavior would endanger our democracy?

Who couldn’t end see the problem with electing, as President of the United States, a man who lied about his military service and who had failed miserably in almost everything he had ever attempted, repeatedly covered up by his family?  What would you expect if you elected such a person to be president?  Why couldn’t we see all of this coming?

And look how we conduct “debates” to evaluate the next president.  They are largely substanceless and xenophobic, relying on soundbites and concocted personal attacks.  Why is it so hard to see that this is a terrible way to evaluate a President?

And why can’t we see that allowing large corporations to pour their money into the coffers of politicians will cause our politicians to do corporate bidding rather than responding to the needs of citizens?  Why is this so hard to anticipate or understand?  The fact that this legalized bribery goes on should be the front page headline in almost every newspaper almost every day. (more…)

The “bipartisan” telecom immunity bill is about to be made law.  It contains a specific provision granting amnesty to the telecoms which has been titled “”Protection of Persons Assisting the Government.”  How bad is this new law?  That depends on how badly you prefer that Courts be open and accessible to citizens.  You see, the proposed law provides for secret dismissals of lawsuits.

Glenn Greenwald has written a scathing review of the bill at Salon:

Perhaps the most repellent part of this bill (though that’s obviously a close competition) is 802(c) of the telecom amnesty section. That says that the Attorney General can declare that the documents he submits to the court in order to get these lawsuits dismissed are secret, and once he declares that, then: (a) the plaintiffs and their lawyers won’t ever see the documents and (b) the court is barred from referencing them in any way when it dismisses the lawsuit. All the court can do is issue an order saying that the lawsuits are dismissed, but it is barred from saying why they’re being dismissed or what the basis is for the dismissal.

So basically, one day in the near future, we’re all going to learn that one of our federal courts dismissed all of the lawsuits against the telecoms. But we’re never going to be able to know why the lawsuits were dismissed or what documents were given by the Government to force the court to dismiss the lawsuits. Not only won’t we, the public, know that, neither will the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Nobody will know except the Judge and the Government because it will all be shrouded in compelled secrecy, and the Judge will be barred by this law from describing or even referencing the grounds for dismissal in any way. Freedom is on the march.

Unbelievable . . .  Not Greenwald who is an astute and highly credible media critic.  I’m reacting to the proposed law.

I highly recommend visiting Salon for a review of Greenwald’s entire article.

Harry Shearer has put together this little “number.” It has a simple theme that everyone should be able to follow.

Why should President Bush be impeached at this point in time? That was the subject of this article at DemocracyNow. Dennis Kucinich, a member of the House of Representatives from Ohio pointed to the concern that President Bush intends to bomb Iran based on lies. He repeatedly indicated that impeachment is not a matter of politics:

There is arguable evidence that President Bush has committed war crimes. We have a moral obligation to have hearings in Judiciary to make a determination whether or not this is so. This goes beyond politics. I have a great respect for John Conyers, I have a great respect for Nancy Pelosi, but this goes beyond politics. This is not—you know, our whole government rests on moral principles, not just on political principles.

And so, we need to evaluate what Congress’s rightful role is here. You know, one of the founders of our nation made it very clear that Congress had a role that was not simply to pass laws, but to ask questions of the executive. This is what helped to create a powerful three-branches-of-government concept that was imbued in the Constitution, co-equality, so that we wouldn’t have a monarch. George Bush has acted in a way that has separated him from the rule of law. Congress must hold him accountable. And to say, “Well, we have more important things to do”—what could be more important than finding out whether or not the President of the United States has committed war crimes, whether or not he’s violated United States law and repeatedly violated the Constitution?

You know, you look at the price of gasoline today. Does anyone have any idea that the United States invaded Iraq for oil, that there were meetings with the oil companies laying out maps of oil fields in Iraq, that Congress has not been able to get full documentation from the Vice President as to what was said in those meetings? What about the pressures that are being put on the Iraq government right now to try to get it to turn over its sovereignty so that the United States can facilitate the control of Iraq oil for the international corporations?

We have to stand up for this country and for its people, and that’s what I’m doing.

See also Keith Olbermann’s take on Kucinich’s action.

According to the AP, George W. Bush recently did a good and honorable thing:

President Bush is backing legislation to prevent people from losing their jobs or health insurance based on genetic testing.

Bush on Wednesday signed into law an anti-discrimination measure that drew enormous support in Congress. It forbids employers and insurance companies from denying employment, promotions or health coverage to people when genetic tests show they are prone to cancer, heart disease or other ailments.

He also did a good thing in 2003 when he signed into law the National No-Call list. Here’s that story:

President Bush on Tuesday signed legislation creating a national “do-not-call” list intended to help consumers block unwanted telemarketing calls.

I want to make sure I recognize that, for the past 7 years, George W. Bush has accomplished two things of which I approve. It’s important to take the time to recognize the accomplishments of people.

So there you are: two good things in seven years.

It’s my opinion, however, that virtually every other thing President Bush has done for the past seven years has been incompetent, dangerous, ignorant, dishonest, bigoted, divisive, corrupt and damaging to the reputation, economy and way of life of those living in the United States. Hence, I agree with this post.

I spotted this video on one of Eddie Roth’s posts at The Platform.

Have you seen Jon Stewart’s interview of Doug Feith?

It is obvious that Feith appeared on the The Daily Show in an attempt to try to:

A) salvage his own sordid reputation, and
B) convince the audience that the Bush Administration didn’t lead the charge to invade Iraq, drumming up false intelligence in the process.

Feith failed miserably on both accounts because Stewart refused to play the role of a nodding bobblehead. In fact, Stewart showed himself to be a better interviewer than most members of the mainstream news media. It was refreshing to see Stewart challenging Feith at every turn.

For an evidence-based version of how this country came to occupy Iraq, watch “Buying the War,” a Bill Moyers video, showing that the Bush Administration consciously and intentionally pulled all the necessary strings and the mainstream media marched in lockstep.

The United States didn’t end up in Iraq because of a series of accidents and mistakes, as Feith tries to argue. The Downing Street memo and Richard Clarke’s accounts, among much other evidence, shows that the Bush Administration planned to march into Baghdad regardless of the evidence. They got their way, and now they, including Feith, are acting like it’s not their fault. Now we’re seeing an extended media campaign of shameless revisionism.

Arrest George W. Bush.

That is the suggestion of Ted Rall, writing on Common Dreams.   Who should arrest President Bush?

There is, however, a person who could begin holding Bush and the others accountable for their crimes.

She is Cathy L. Lanier, the 39-year-old chief of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department. Chief Lanier, take note: you have probable cause to arrest a self-confessed serial torturer and mass murderer within the borders of the District of Columbia. He resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Go get him.

History is calling, Chief Lanier. Your city, and your country, needs you.

What? The White House is endangering us by withholding information?

This is getting to be a familiar story, right? Here’s the typical plot: There’s something going on that poses a serious risk to Americans, and the White House decides to protect big corporations rather than protect the people at risk.

This time, the protected industry consists of chemical manufacturers. The victims are American citizens, many of them recalcitrant admirers of the Bush Administration. Here’s an excerpt of the article by the Associated Press:

The Bush administration is undermining the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to determine health dangers of toxic chemicals by letting non-scientists have a bigger - often secret - role, congressional investigators say in a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The administration’s decision to give the Defense Department and other agencies an early role in the process adds to years of delay in acting on harmful chemicals and jeopardizes the program’s credibility, the Government Accountability Office concluded.

At issue is the EPA’s screening of chemicals used in everything from household products to rocket fuel to determine if they pose serious risk of cancer or other illnesses.

How many people are dying out there because they have been exposed to common chemicals of which most people don’t know of the dangers? How many of those people are children? Every time I hear of another person getting cancer (especially when I hear of a young child getting cancer), I wonder whether it’s because he or she has been exposed too long to that thick cocktail of chemicals in which we live. And we live our lives in ignorance thanks to a government which should be protecting us.

You might be thinking “Surely, the government is at least letting us know about the most commonly used risky chemicals?” That assumption would be wrong:

After years of stops and starts, the GAO said, the EPA has yet to determine carcinogen risks for a number of major chemicals such as:

-Naphthalene, a chemical used in rocket fuel as well as in manufacturing commercial products such as mothballs, dyes and insecticides.

-Trichloroethylene, or TCE, a widely used industrial degreasing agent.

-Perchloroethylene, or “perc,” a chemical used in dry cleaning, metal degreasing and making chemical products.

-Formaldehyde, a colorless, flammable gas used to making building materials.

Environmentalists say these chemicals have been widely found at military bases and Superfund sites and in soil, lakes, streams and groundwater.

Now . . . if you really want to know how bad things are, read this Harper’s article: “Toxic inaction: Why poisonous, unregulated chemicals end up in our blood.” (more…)

What wacky liberal is saying these treasonous things?  It’s actually Lee Iacocca, who used to run Chrysler Corporation.  These excerpts are from Iacocca’s book, “Where Have all the Leaders Gone?” :

‘Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage?

We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.

But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course’. Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America , not the damned ‘Titanic’. I’ll give you a sound bite: ‘Throw all the bums out!’

You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore.

I once created a fake college and I’m proud of it.

This might strike you as odd, because most people who create diploma mills are doing so to make a quick buck by passing out bogus degrees.  These fake diplomas, in turn, allow unqualified people to get promotions and or get jobs for which they are not qualified.  The people with these fake diplomas often obtain government jobs, but they are sometimes securing positions of serious responsibility in the private sector.  Providing fake diplomas is a huge national industry, as it has been for many decades.

When I created my fake college, I did not do it to make money.  I created my diploma mill while I was working as an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Missouri.  I worked in the Trade Offense Division, where I was an attorney charged with investigating and prosecuting criminal and civil fraud.

The year was 1988 and I had been investigating diploma mills (among other types of investigtions).  It was amazing to me that a person could obtain a degree from a college simply by submitting papers over the period of a few months and then obtain an advanced degree, often an MBA but sometimes a Ph.D. in something esoteric.

I had noticed that several of the bogus colleges I was investigating were “accredited.”  One particular accrediting organization popped out repeatedly during my investigations: “The International Accrediting Commission for Schools, Colleges and Theological Seminaries.” This one organization was responsible for accrediting many hundreds of small and medium-sized colleges across the United States, as well as colleges in other countries.  Many of these colleges had impressive names.  Many of these schools were small Bible colleges and other schools of religious affiliation.  There were many secular schools too. The IAC accredited-colleges granted advanced degrees in a wide variety of subjects.  The IAC was based in my own state of Missouri.

I arranged for my investigator to call the IAC to see what it took to get accredited.  My investigator discussed the accreditation process with the president of the IAC, “Dr. George Reuter.”  Reuter explained that he would need make an on-site visit of a college before granting accreditation and that he charged a schedule of fees that ran upwards of $1000, plus his transportation costs to get to the college or university.  He also insisted on being reimbursed for meals while he was working.

While making this phone call, my investigator called himself “Dr. Richard Taylor,” (a pseudonym) and indicated that he was in the process of starting a brand-new college, The Eastern Missouri Business College, located in St. Louis.  Rick (his real first name) explained to Dr. Rueter that Eastern Missouri Business College would be offering master’s degrees and Ph.D.’s through the mail (remember. . . there was no Internet 18 years ago) in such diverse topics as Genetic Engineering, Social Work, Administration of Justice, Marine Biology and Aerospace Science. Dr. Rueter indicated that we should give him another call when the school was up and running.

As I mentioned, I worked for a state law enforcement office.  Therefore, money was tight.  We did manage to scrape up enough money to pay for our accreditation fees, however.  We called Dr. Rueter again a few weeks later and arranged for him to come St. Louis to make an official visit to the Eastern Missouri Business College.  Although Rueter did not sound very impressive over the phone (he sounded low-energy and not very sharp), we were a bit concerned that when he actually showed up he would want to really know about our college. 

If we told the full truth about what we were doing, we would instantly be exposed.  If we lied too well, however, perhaps no one would blame Rueter for accrediting us.  We went with my gut hunch that Rueter was totally in this for the money and had no interest in making sure that our school was legitimate.  Therefore, we did some pretty ridiculous things, things that any legitimate accrediting organization would instantly notice.  For instance, we filled our college catalog with the names of fictitious faculty members bearing the names of TV characters such as The Three Stooges and various characters from an old comedy shows such as “Green acres” (e.g., Arnold Ziffel taught at our college). (more…)

I have no sympathy. I can’t help it, but powerful people who behave this way strike me as the essence of…

Spitzer wired the call girl service the money. Granted, he set up a relatively elaborate blind to hide the transaction (it was his own money, not the state’s), primarily from his wife, but the fact is he established the monitoring protocols in the banking system in New York to catch exactly this kind of covert transfer. In other words, he made sure the system could catch him.

The first question that came to my mind was: why didn’t he use cash?

The second question—

Well, the second question is such a cliche it almost doesn’t bear asking, but: what he hell was he thinking?

Not thinking. Acting. Reacting. Making an assumption. I’ve already heard the term “self destructive” applied, and it would indeed seem the case. He was instrumental in breaking up a prominent prostitution ring as a prosecutor, he’d gone on record about the destructiveness of prostitution to families and to society, he had made a Big Deal about ethics in all his campaigns.

For the record, while I certainly agree that prostitution can be destructive, I do not agree that it is necessarily so. Like other things, it depends on context, and in the context of a society that criminalizes it, thereby making sex workers vulnerable to all sorts of criminal control elements, yes it is very destructive. But not in and of itself as an idea. There have been times and places where it was not so, and even in this country (Nevada) we can see instances where it is the avenue to financial independence for women and men (yes, men—we forget in the salaciousness of scandal that there are male prostitutes, both straight and gay, that women from time to time have been known to pay for sex they can’t get “at home”). Like any other industry, there are levels, and like any otehr industry in history where social controls did not exist, there are abuses. Keeping it illegal means normative protections and access to all the safeguards that, say, construction workers take for granted do not and cannot apply.

However. In Spitzer’s case he created his own disaster by loudly proclaiming his support for keeping prostitution illegal and then acting on that stance. Add to that the banking practices for which he was also responsible, and I find I have no sympathy for him. He acted foolishly.

Clinton did not run on an extreme family values platform. It was there, he gave it lip service, but it was never a centerpiece of any of his campaigns. One may question his judgment in the case of Monica, but the lying to Congress was far worse than his little breech of conduct in an anteroom of the Oval Office.

People at that level should know better. To be crude, they have staff who can handle that sort of thing. (Let’s be honest—even CEOs, presidents of corporations, and so forth hire “handlers” who do everything from scheduling high powered meetings to getting the cleaning done. Arranging trysts—and making sure they stay off the radar– would simply be one of their functions, and a governor, much less a president, should have two or three people like this.)

As to why he did it…do we really need to ask that? Come on. Sex and its convolutions is one of those areas wherein we turn a blind eye as if a part of our brain had been excised and we can’t bear to think about it.

What follows is a teensy-bit R rated. Nothing graphic, but the ideas might shock.

You’re married. You have 90% of a good relationship with your spouse. But you like this one thing in bed, really like it, the way wine connosieurs like a rare Bordeaux—and for whatever reason your spouse just won’t do it. The question is, do you just shut that desire off and go to your grave never having it? Or do you step outside to have your Bordeaux?

We all have choices, sure, but the nature of that one seems draconian. You might say to the connosieur “You’ve become an alcoholic, you may not drink at all,” and that would be valid. But to say “I don’t like Bordeaux, at least not that vintage, so you can’t have it either as long as you’re with me…” That’s not the same.

How one chooses to handle this problem is also another matter. I’m all for open discussion. Sneaking around behind your spouse’s back is a major Do Not Do for me. But one ought to be able to talk about this. (Personally, I have always been of the opinion that the Clinton’s have an arrangement like this, going all the way back to Bill’s days as governor of Arkansas. I think what incensed Hilary was that Bill picked that partner under those conditions, and then lied about it. After all, he had handlers…)

But my lack of sympathy for Spitzer has nothing to do with the sex. It is the two-faced way he has conducted his public policy life. Obviously, he thought the rules he advocated for everyone else ought not to apply to him.

Or, more perversely and I think not at all uncommon, he wanted to rid the landscape of any and all opportunity in order to keep temptation away from himself—that he knew on some level that he couldn’t say no, so the only way to protect his integrity would be to banish the object of his desire.

But that meant banishing it for everyone else as well. So to serve the interests of his own inability to manage an appetite, everyone had to pay the price.

Just as they kind of are now.

He rendered himself ineffective as a governor in this. Because of the illegal nature of prostitution, because of that he opened himself up to blackmail. The only way out of that trap would be to declare that he didn’t care and that he believed prostitution ought not be a crime in any event.

But he’d already closed that avenue of argument.

No sympathy at all.

Idiot.

In some of my previous posts both here on Dangerous Intersection and on Daylight Atheism, I’ve done my best to call attention to the corrupt, degraded state of most of today’s major news-gathering organizations. But a story I read today is truly the most astonishing example yet - both in the way the mainstream media has totally abandoned basic principles of journalistic ethics and integrity, and in the way they brazenly flaunt that behavior.

Last weekend, U.S. presidential candidate John McCain invited reporters to his vacation home in Arizona for a barbecue. McCain’s aides and staffers explained that the weekend was intended as a “social event” - i.e., no questions about McCain’s campaign strategy, voting record, or political positions - and was therefore off the record. When some reporters objected, McCain’s staff agreed that the weekend would be on the record after all, but only on the condition that reporters brought no audio or video recording equipment. The reporters meekly acceded to this, and that was the extent of our brave press corps’ journalistic heroism.

As I said, since the weekend was a “social event”, no questions were asked that would tell the American public anything of substance about McCain the candidate. Instead, the press corps was wined, dined and schmoozed by McCain’s campaign all weekend. Evidently, none of them saw anything improper either in accepting these gifts or in telling us all about it. I’ll let our brave, intrepid reporters describe their weekend retreat with Mr. Straight Talk in their own words.

Holly Bailey of Newsweek has the scoop on the accommodations:

The campaign booked the senator’s aides and reporters into one of the only big hotels in town: the Enchantment Resort, a five-star hotel nestled so far back in the picturesque red rock canyons of Sedona that most in the group found that their cell phones were out of range. To cope with the stress of being incommunicado, people booked massages at the hotel spa and went on hikes, including one on which an instructor sought to help participants unblock their “inner chi.” “Let me tell you, I’ve got a lot of chi today,” joked Steve Duprey, a close friend of McCain’s from New Hampshire who has been traveling with the campaign. Others played golf, went swimming or simply explored the hotel compound.

Michael D. Shear of the Washington Post tells us more about the five-star hotel he and his colleagues enjoyed:

The idea, McCain said, was to allow reporters to get to know him and his staff under less stressful circumstances. (The fact that the press spent the weekend at a resort called Enchantment where many sipped wine and enjoyed lengthy deep-tissue massages probably contributed to that feeling.)

Several reporters from CNN blew the lid off of McCain’s barbecued ribs recipe:

McCain revealed that barbecuing for guests is one of the few ways he relaxes, especially during the grueling campaign, and was eager to share his carefully honed recipe on the gas grill: baby back ribs (bought at Costco), cooked bones down with a dry rub that’s a third garlic powder, a third salt and a third pepper.

The trick to not letting it dry out? Keep putting lemon juice on, the senator said.

…Dinner was served on tables by Oak Creek, which runs through the property. The menu included ribs, grilled chicken, hot dogs, bratwurst, hamburgers, beef tamales, couscous and pasta salad.

CBS News’ Dante Higgins offers these penetrating bits of journalistic insight about McCain’s wardrobe and interior decorator:

McCain wore a white sweatshirt with a silk-screened family photo on it, sunglasses, a green baseball cap and blue jeans. As grillmaster, he looked like the all-American dad, with a story for every spot in the house.

…The décor of McCain’s house had a southwest flavor. Navajo rugs don the walls and floors. Well worn couches and chairs furnish the lower level of his home, which has exposed brick, wooden door frames, and paneling. In one room, political cartoons of McCain from the 2000 election cover the walls.

And finally, showing the dispassionate analysis that’s made the mainstream media so well-respected, Jeff Mason of Reuters renders his wholly objective verdict on the barbecued spare ribs:

So how did they taste?

Objectivity prohibits a good reporter from passing judgement, but let’s put it this way: everyone wants to come back.

What I find most astonishing is that, of all the reporters who were invited to McCain’s house, not a one of them that I’ve read had the slightest qualm. It’s unbelievably inappropriate that any reporter would agree to this, let alone the dozens who evidently did. I don’t believe this even needs to be said, but apparently our press corps needs to be reminded: reporters should not be accepting expensive gifts and lavish weekend retreats from the candidates they’re supposed to be covering! Do they really expect us to believe they can report on McCain critically and objectively after this? Will they be dissuaded from reporting negative news about him if he threatens not to invite them back?

The purpose of this retreat should be obvious to everyone except our deaf, blind and dumb press corps, who apparently thought McCain was doing it purely out of the goodness of his heart. In reality, even a child could see that he did it because he wanted to bribe the press into giving him favorable coverage. And they obliged him, apparently without even a tremor of conscience, accepting his blatant bribe and then filing multiple positive stories about the nice time they had at McCain’s beautiful desert ranch and the five-star hotel he booked for them. They gave him exactly what he wanted, and they never even seemed to glimpse the truth of how they’re being used.

But perhaps I’m unfairly impugning the press. Perhaps they realized full well what McCain was doing. But if so, that makes this even worse, because they went along with it anyway. It’s a sad commentary on the state of the media in our nation. Once they saw their function as “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. Now they count themselves among the ranks of the comfortable, and their sympathies lie, not with the public whom they’re supposed to be informing, but with their wealthy and famous friends in the glittery upper circles of society. The media nowadays seems to see its primary role as congratulating itself on how influential it is, and they view the flattery of the powerful as their just desserts.

Any real reporter would have flatly turned down McCain’s obvious and shameless attempt at a bribe. Any real reporter would have walked out the moment he heard that there would be no interviews or probing question sessions that weekend. It speaks volumes that none of them apparently did. And the fact that their editors and superiors also evidently saw nothing wrong with this is evidence that the corruption of the media is not isolated, but pervasive and systemic. The media, in its present state, has become the enemy of democracy, rather than its guardian. We need to encourage people to get their information from alternative sources that do real reporting and that are not beholden to the wealthy and powerful.

In today’s column, Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com offers links to numerous credible resources that document:

1. That the U.S. Government has illegally spied on thousands of Americans and continues to illegally spy on Americans.

2. That the White House blatantly lies about this gross misuse of government power;

3. That Congress (with the notable exception of Russ Feingold) doesn’t care enough about this issue to do anything about it, and readily buys the lies of the White House, and

4. If unchecked power is vested in government officials, they’re going to abuse that power;

Greenwald’s suggestion is that the existing three branches of government need a big push because they are simply not getting the job done:

Maybe the only way to ensure that vast surveillance powers aren’t abused is to have something like an independent check on how those powers are exercised — a check from, say, one of the branches other than the one exercising those powers.  It’s understandable that our Congress hasn’t yet decided that this is necessary because the whole “checks-and-balances” concept is quite new, just a couple hundred years old.

 Greenwald’s windup spells a-p-a-t-h-y:

At some point — many, many years from now — there will be some report issued by an executive agency or a Congressional Committee finally describing the nature of the illegal spying programs implemented by the Bush administration and detailing all of the abuses. And the same members of Congress who looked the other way and then voted to legalize these programs will express all kinds of outrage and surprise.

A new Salon.com book review gives us the depressing and infuriating answers to how much the Iraq adventure is costing the citizens of the United States.   The book, written by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, is titled “The Three Trillion Dollar War:  The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.”   In typical dyfunctional White House style, White House spokesman Tony Fratto has argued that the book is misguided because “One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.”  As though the occupation of Iraq has anything to do with 9/11 . . .

The numbers presented by Stiglitz and Bilmes are truly staggering:

“The Three Trillion Dollar War” talks about two types of war-related expenses: budgetary and social. Budgetary costs include operational spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, which they estimate will total from $1.7 trillion to $2.7 trillion. (Throughout the book, the authors put forward two sets of figures: one based on a “best-case scenario” and one on a far more likely “realistic-moderate” scenario.) This figure includes the expense of keeping armies in the field, paying veteran-related costs, replacing equipment ($400 billion for this alone), and paying interest on the vast debt we have incurred to fight the war. So far, Congress has actually appropriated $645 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, plus the $200 billion Bush asked for in 2008. As the authors point out, this is more than the U.S. spends annually on Medicare and Medicaid combined. And the monthly “burn rate” to pay for the wars has gone steadily up, from $4.4 billion in 2003 to $16 billion today. This means that every American household is spending $138 a month on the current operating expenses of the wars.

The additional “social” costs that are not borne by the government are harder to calculate — and more controversial.

As an aside, I find the neocon sleight of hand interesting.  The usual neocon line when it comes to taxes is that money paid as taxes really belongs to the people.   Fair enough.   Why then, don’t neocons emphasize that these wild, irresponsible, inefficient and often corrupt expenditures on the Iraq occupation (I don’t call it a “war”) are being paid with my money and your money, not “government” money?  If any of you American families out there have a better use for $138 each month than blowing up buildings and people in Iraq, raise your hand!

In an interview published by McClatchy Newspapers Feb 27, 2008, Stiglitz warns that the worst is yet to come regarding our military expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan:

In an interview, Stiglitz said that too much of the public debate had been over the wars’ operational costs while the real budget strains would show up only years from now.

“The peak expenditures are way out,” he said, noting that the peak expenditures for World War II vets came in 1993.

The McClatchy article reminds us of the rosy 2003 predictions of the Bush Administration:

When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would be self-financing and that rebuilding the nation would cost less than $2 billion.

Being off by a few decimal points in grade school gets a student a well-deserved “F.”  

I’ve spent a lot of time studying Republican political anatomy.   You see, I’m not only an armchair anthropologist, but I’m a social neuro-surgeon (a brand-new expertise, created today).   After careful review of all available relevant data, I have developed a precise chart (click on the thumbnail below) detailing each of the major features of the modern Republican brain.  

No, you won’t find “Iraq” on this anatomical diagram, even though it reveals each of the major neural substructures found in the modern Republican brain.  That’s because the modern Repubublican has developed relatively recently.  No specialized “Iraq” module has thus had time to evolve. You will nonetheless find each of the brain structures that, working together, compel the instigation of multiple fear-induced, needless, destructive, ineptly planned, corrupt and potentially non-ending military conflicts in the Middle East. 

Whenever sufficient numbers of these malignant features are found in the brains of those who hold substantial political power, one can expect the atrophy of an entire country, absent immediate and dramatic political resuscitation. 

Without further ado, here it is.  Just click on the thumbnail for all the gory details:

If you’d like to review some fascinating and rigorous psychological data of what it means to be a conservative, check out