Obama's new overtime proposal more smoke and mirrors.And he knows it.

Obama newest economic initiative, something he is now publicly touting as an example of his new found economic populism,  is like so many other Obama initiatives, nothing more than snake oil, smoke and mirrors designed to sound good but which will accomplish nothing.

It's a proposal by which millions of Americans who currently work overtime without getting paid for it, would now be paid.

This newest bit of  sleight of hand consists of raising the base salary for which workers are entitled to overtime from a current ridiculously low $23,000 a year to $50,000 a year.  Sounds good right? Sounds like something long overdue, right? Sounds like trying to strike a blow for fairness and income equality right?

Not exactly. It's more fakery and snake oil,  a proposal that sounds good for what ails you but on closer examination is like flavored water - empty and meaningless. It should be labeled "for entertainment purposes only" because that's what it is.

And it's meaningless because of one very important fact -- there is nothing in Obama's proposal or law that would prevent an employer from cutting the base salary of an employee who would qualify for the overtime under the new law to offset the new overtime increases, resulting in a net gain for the worker of zero. Nothing. And cutting base salaries to compensate for increased overtime pay is the first thing employers will do if the law passed. Then the employees that Obama is claiming to help will have two choices -- take the pay cut or quit.

It's a proposal that does nothing for workers who work overtime without getting paid for it. But it does give Obama something to talk about. And talk he is. He announced his proposal with the statement " I believe in middle class economics". Which is why not a single Wall Street or bank executive whose greed caused the economic crisis that threw millions of people out of work and out of their homes was ever prosecuted for fraud even though they admitted to it and were allowed to  cut a deal by paying big  fines instead of going to prison. While tax payer dollars bailed them out. If that isn't believing in middle class economics I don't know what is. 

Obama's new proposal is hollow and gives the pretense of  doing something to benefit workers while at the same time giving a wink to employers and will have no affect on doing what it pretends to do -- put more money in the pockets of workers who put in overtime but don't get paid for it. 

Obama said in announcing his new proposal, "  The current rules leave millions of Americans working long hours which take them away from their families without giving them the overtime pay they deserve".   That's all true.  And under Obama's stirring new proposal it still will. Which means if there was ever an offer of help that deserved the reply, " thanks for nothing" this is it.

Tiger's Not Back! Tiger's Not Back!

Tiger Woods shot the worst round of his life in the US Open, missed the cut and finished tied for 151 out of 156 players. Finally even sports writers  and those specifically covering golf  who had been making excuses for Woods for 7 years despite the fact that he was only a shell of his former self are finally admitting he's not what he was and probably wont ever be.

But for the last seven years, despite the fact that Woods game had deteriorated beyond recognition and he wasn't even competitive, you wouldn't have known it from the sports news media until now. But they are still afraid to say why.

Over the last seven years, showing the kind of double standards that define contemporary journalism as bad, incompetent and dishonest no matter what the story, despite his disastrous play, if Woods ate a bowl of soup without dribbling down his chin the writers covering golf and sports in general would be proclaiming, " Tigers back, Tigers' back". Jim Nance of CBS was one of the biggest cheerleaders. Woods could play three holes decently without tripping over his club and Nance was proclaiming Woods was showing his old form and he was good as ever. Not exactly.

The hypocrisy and dishonesty of the news media covering Woods hung in the air every time he played and was evident even as one of Woods' tee shots would veer off into the spectator area. Any criticism of Woods would mean his agent would shut them out, no interviews, no nothing. And maybe even counter attack which they did when a broadcaster at the Golf Channel accused Woods of trying to cheat and break the rules while playing a hole in a tournament a year ago.

So none of them wanted to touch the obvious -- what it was that brought about Woods' demise. 

When the story first broke in 2007 that Woods had been cheating on his new wife and new baby, and not just cheating but cheating with women most people wouldn't bring home to meet their goldfish, I said privately that Woods was finished. Not so much finished in terms of advertisers and endorsements or even public opinion, though in the immediate aftermath advertisers understandably left him, but that he was finished as an athlete, as a force in the world of professional golf and that he'd never be the same again, never be able to perform at the level he had been. His demise was predictable.

 Golf is not a team sport. You are out there by yourself. If anything is off by a millimeter, if timing or eye - hand coordination is off by a fraction it can be the difference between shooting 70 and shooting 80 and at the pro level of competition that means disaster. So how does he go out there and play at the same level knowing his carefully crafted image is now in tatters? 

To make matters worse some of the women were making public text messages Woods had sent them,  some incredibly insulting to his wife and others revealing that Woods had some sexual proclivities that most people wouldn't want broadcast to the world. This isn't to judge Woods or what anyone enjoys sexually which is no ones business but their own. But Woods did go out of his way to concoct a facade of a squeaky clean image, someone with an almost Boy Scout- like moral character which  made it even more embarrassing. And hypocritical.

So even back in 2007 I wondered how Woods would be able to play golf at the level  he had been accustomed to in front of thousands of spectators and tens of millions watching around the world, while knowing he was the center of attention and knowing that the whole world knew not only that he had been cheating on his wife and child,  but  knowing what Woods liked these women to do to him  sexually. ( no, there is no reason to repeat it here -- this is about lousy journalism not Woods sex life).

How do you compartmentalize that? How do you shut it out? The answer is Woods couldn't.

But you wouldn't know any of this was even an issue or part of the mix by how Woods was covered by the news media. No one said a word. It was all hush hush. It wasn't  an 800 lb gorilla in the room but an entire zoo. And the sports and golf journalists covering Woods just pretended it didn't exist.

And for the same reasons that political and domestic journalists always play the same game whether it's George W Bush in the White House or  Obama -- to preserve their access  and fear of criticism from any sizeable audience where they might feel professionally threatened.

Any golf or sports writer touching on the real reason behind Woods demise knew they would be denied access to Woods in the future. They were also big fans of Woods (as most everyone was) who in his prime was one of the greatest golf pros ever and so there was fear of potential backlash from Woods' fans if he wasn't treated with kid gloves. 

So for the last seven years while watching Woods game deteriorate into something almost farcical considering what he once was, and all of it happening after the whole mess was made public, they all  pretended they had no idea why Woods wasn't what he used to be. And talked about every possible reason. Except the real one.

It's been a case in point of how corrupt and dishonest journalists can be when covering a story and how they will slant or corrupt the truth based on their own bias and self interest and like so many in journalism, bury the truth rather than run the risk of the truth burying them, a risk any real journalist would take as part of their job.

No one covering Woods wanted to talk about those events and how public knowledge of those events  could have affected Woods' play.  Instead they reported that Woods blamed it on his swing.  Golf analysts gave us countless slow motion video clips of the old Woods and new trying to analyze the differences in the swing .  But the only swinging that caused Woods' game to deteriorate was the swinging he did with what some might call bimbos that became public knowledge.

Woods paid, not millions but tens of millions, maybe more to keep these women quiet,  to get them to stop revealing the text messages or details of their encounters with Woods and to keep them out of the tabloids  or making  TV appearances. He bought their silence with tens of millions. The sports news media was happy to do it for free. As long as they could get an interview.

 As part of the settlements the women were required to stay silent. They couldn't even mention the name Tiger Woods in public or anything about a settlement or for how much. Otherwise they'd forfeit everything Woods agreed to pay them to keep them quiet.

And since 2008 every broadcaster and journalist covering Woods has been happy to go along,  avoiding mentioning it like the plague. Even this year at the Open they never reported that someone had hired a plane to carry a banner over the golf course calling Woods a cheater.

Now having had the worst tournament round of his career in the Open, he missed the cut again, finishing tied for 151 out of 156 players. Even amateurs beat him.

But this time we're no longer hearing the farcical  "Tiger's back ! Tiger's back!" if he manages to even play par for a few holes. His two day total of 156 was the worst of his career. But the denial in the news media continues exemplified by a sports reporter named Joe Thomson writing for both ESPN and The Score web sites  who wrote of Woods missing the cut, " nobody seems to have answers for Tiger's flagging game".

 It still says a lot about journalism,  how they play favorites, how dishonest they are when it comes to pure reporting and how much they are willing to hide or  ignore when they want to no matter how relevant.

 They still wont say why Woods isn't what he used to be.  Instead, like journalists of all kinds they run with the herd, each mimicking the other, none with the courage to step away from the herd and tell the truth. Which makes the real plague the dishonest way journalists cover stories now and how that plague affects and infects  everything they do. No matter what story they are covering. So while Tiger's ex-wife learned she couldn't trust him, the country's Tiger problem is we can't trust the news media. 

With TPP now stalled but scheduled for a new vote Democrats should remember how Obama was caught lying about NAFTA.

News outlets are calling it a " humiliating defeat for Obama". On Friday a bipartisan vote which included 144 Democrats voted down 126-302 a key part of the TPP for retraining displaced workers that was part of the  TPP package that would give Obama fast track authority on trade deals. The TAA portion of the bill was voted down in a resounding defeat despite Obama's personal visit to the Capitol to lobby Democrats to support the bill.

Boehner  is scheduling a new vote on Tuesday,and while  there is no reason to think any Democrats will change their vote,for any Democrats on the fence and feeling shaky in the face of a new round of Obama arm twisting, or even succumbing to potential bribes,  it might help for them to recall how regarding another trade deal,  NAFTA,  Obama was caught in one of the most cynical,  dishonest, callous and self serving lies ever told by a candidate for any office much less the presidency. It was a lie so egregious it was proof that Obama could never  be trusted about anything and revealed a degree of dishonesty and duplicity that would have ended not just the candidacy of any other presidential candidate  but most likely their entire political career.  Had Obama not been carrying the symbolism of electing the First Black President which had become cause celebre to many in the Democratic party and news media,   it would have.

 It happened during the Ohio presidential primaries in 2008 where polls showed Obama trailing Hillary Clinton by a landslide margin.  At the time, even before the economic crisis, Ohio had been dealing with massive unemployment especially in manufacturing jobs and had at the time, 286,000 unemployed. In his effort to gets votes, Obama blamed their unemployment on NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement Bill Clinton had signed with Mexico and Canada and then tried to tie Hillary Clinton to the trade deal. 

Politifact quickly labeled Obama's assertions that NAFTA was the sole cause of Ohio's high unemployment untrue.  But that turned out to be the least of Obama's falsehoods.

Obama in his speeches in Ohio looked the unemployed in the eye and told them emphatically that not only was NAFTA to blame for their unemployment but that if  he was elected president he would get rid of it.

What was exposed days later,  was that at the same time he was telling the people of Ohio that NAFTA was the cause of their problems and he would end it, he sent Austan Goolsbee, one of his economic advisors to the Canadian embassy in Chicago to tell them to ignore what Obama was saying publicly about getting rid of NAFTA, he had no intention of getting rid of it and what he was saying publicly in Ohio was just politics.

Someone at the Canadian embassy not taken with Obama's duplicity, leaked the substance of the meeting to the AP who reported it. Obama immediately denied it and lied about it for 7 straight days.  

First he denied there was even anyone by the name of Austan Goolsbee working for his campaign. When it was pointed out that Goolsbee was listed as one of his economic advisors Obama's reaction was almost " Oh that Austan Goolsbee". He  then conceded Goolsbee worked for his campaign but said he never sent him to the Canadian embassy in Chicago. When the log books were checked and it was reported that Goolsbee did indeed go to the Canadian embassy on the date reported, Obama said, well  okay, maybe he did, but he went on his own for his own reasons and not as part of his campaign,

When the log book entry confirmed that Goolsbee was indeed sent there on behalf of the Obama campaign Obama's response was, well okay,okay maybe he did go there on behalf of his campaign but he never told Goolsbee to tell the Canadians that what he was saying about getting rid of NAFTA was just politics and that he had no intention of getting rid of it. That,Obama said,was untrue.

This final lie was apparently too much for someone inside the Canadian embassy who was present at the meeting and they leaked the actual physical written minutes of the meeting to the AP who published them. The minutes showed Goolsbee told the embassy that he was sent there by Obama  to reassure them that despite what Obama  was saying publicly in his speeches he had no intention of getting rid of NAFTA, it was just politics.

While the news media made a story of it momentarily it was dropped soon after the primary and Obama was never held accountable for his serial lying about the incident not to mention the substance of his duplicity. Obama's supporters for the most part turned a blind eye to the release of the minutes and all the proof of how cyncially Obama lied and played politics with people's lives, since none of them wanted to deal with Obama's dishonesty and lack of integrity and cynical politics because of the cause celebre at the time of electing the First Black President. And few in  the news media wanted to be responsible for  sending that train off its tracks. So no one held Obama's feet to the fire as evidence of both a lack of character, untrustworthiness and duplicitous policy. It was easier to bash Clinton instead. 

The Clinton campaign responded but it was mild, even tepid, because behind the scenes they were were being  pressured by the DNC  not to attack Obama too hard. 

In the end, Clinton beat Obama in the Ohio primary by landslide numbers, the candidates moved on and the news media, unlike raking Anthony Weiner over the coals for weeks and parking satellite trucks in front of his home  for a consensual online sex chat, dropped and ignored the whole episode. 

It was revived momentarily during the 2010 Olympics in Canada as a result of a Canadian version of the Freedom of Information Act filed by Canadian journalists for access to the emails between the embassy in Chicago and Ottawa at the time. The emails  were made public and showed that some inside the government applauded the release of the minutes exposing Obama's duplicity while others were more interested in damage control should Obama get elected. But all the emails confirmed one thing: the validity and truthfulness  of what had happened which both Obama and Goolsbee had tried to deny.

By that time the U.S. news media was more interested in the Olympics than Obama's lies concerning NAFTA in 2008 and nothing more was made of it.

What's relevant now is that TPP is about giving Obama fast track authority to make deals that congress can't modify. And with a Republican majority in the House and senate its likely that Republicans are not going to be concerned about the same issues as Democrats, like  jobs. In fact one of the Republican proposals was to cut Medicare by $700 million and use the money to help or retrain those who will lose their jobs as a result of the TPP, something Obama had no problem doing. Which is in effect an admission that the trade bill Obama is pushing would cost jobs. The provision didn't fly because too many Republicans up for re-election didn't want to be tied to Medicare cuts.

The vote on Friday was a clear rebuke to Obama from Democrats whom he tried to woo in a closed door meeting by questioning their integrity. Which is like Bernie Madoff complaining about excessive bank fees for bounced checks. But while the bill is now stalled it's not yet killed entirely and Boehner will bring it up for a vote again on Thursday with Obama colluding with Mitchell and Boehner to get it passed. 

So it's still useful for Democrats to remember what happened in Ohio in 2008 and what it said about Obama since the real issue for Democrats is about whether Obama can be trusted to negotiate deals that Democrats can't modify in a Republican controlled congress.  Based on his history,  not as far as you can throw an unemployment check.  

And based on the House vote on Friday most Democrats seem to have gotten the memo.  Including the one from the Canadian embassy in 2008. 

For those interested, the entire memo of the meeting in 2008 that Obama at first said never took place can be read here.

Dennis Hastert: another "do as we say not as we do" Republican.

News of  Dennis Hasterts indictment for violating banking regulations and lying to the  FBI over large cash withdrawals he was making for hush money to cover up his having sexually molested at least one underage male while a teacher and wrestling coach in Illinois has left a lot of Republicans " shocked". Why they are shocked is hard to say.

 

Hastert was the Speaker of the House for 7 years. He became Speaker in 1998 replacing Bob Livingston. Bob Livingston had been Speaker for only 24 hours before having to resign, having  just replaced Newt Gingrich the one time conservative Republican Speaker who had been found guilty of ethics violations and who resigned in the wake of Republicans being swept out of the House ( as an aside Gingrich is now a regular contributor on CNN proving that being unethical is  no stumbling block for employment at CNN which makes their coverage of everything from Ferguson to politics understandable).

 

Livingston had to resign just 24 hours after being elected Speaker because it was at the height of Republican attacks and news media lunancy over Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, and it was revealed that Livingston was too having an affair while continuing to criticize Clinton over Lewinsky but had no problem accepting the Speakership anyway. Then he was caught, his affair made public and was forced to resign.

Gingrich  too, it was subsequently revealed,  had been cheating on his wife with his own "female subordinate" as Republicans liked to refer to Lewinsky, at the same time he also was criticizing Clinton. Gingrich in fact said at the time that he "would not let a day go by when I will not remind the country of what Clinton did". While doing the same thing. 

 

House judiciary committee chairman, the late Henry Hyde who presided over Clinton's impeachment  was also exposed as having been cheating on his wife at the same time and was not only cheating on his wife but he was cheating on the woman he was cheating with by lying to her about being married.

 

After Hastert became Speaker he was strongly criticized in 2005 for not taking stronger, harsher and faster action against Mark Foley a House Republican who had been sending sexually explicit instant messages to underage male House pages. Obviously the hypocrisy of that would've been too much for Hastert. 

 

All these Republicans by the way, including Hastert had voted for The Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 designed to prevent gays from getting married. 

 

Then there was Tom DeLay, former Republican whip in the House who was recently released from prison after being convicted of money laundering and sent to prison.  And Duke Cunningham, another conservative Republican congressman was sent to prison for accepting bribes on defense contracts.  And let's not forget former Republican senator Larry "wide stance" Craig  who was arrested for soliciting sex through a stall in the mens room at an airport.

 

Most recently the Republicans had conservative senator from Louisiana David Vitter, who was re-elected by the conservative Republican majority in Louisiana who was caught cheating on his wife with prostitutes provided to him by the Washington D.C. Madam. 

 

Now we have  Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, lobbyist, member of the board at Wheaton College, a Christian school, now under federal indictment for lying to the FBI while making $3.5 million in hush money payments to a man who as a minor,  Hastert sexually molested repeatedly as a school teacher and wrestling coach back in the 60's and 70's. There is news that there is another man and possibly a third with a similar story.

 

Hastert has pled not guilty to the charges against him , resigned from his law firm,  resigned as a lobbyist, resigned his position at Wheaten College,there is  pressure to remove Hastert's portrait from the halls of the Capitol and Hastert has asked the Illinois state legislature to put on hold a $500,000 statue of him they planned to erect in his honor, though given the reasons for the hush money maybe "erect" isnt the best choice of words.

 

Hastert has turned out to be another in a long list of  "do as we say not as we do" Republicans who over the decades, dating back to the Nixon White House,  and HR Haldeman who have two sets of values , one for them and one for everyone else having  constantly moralized about everything setting themselves up as the arbiter of "values" and "morality" only to be exposed as hypocrites and the first to violate those same "values". Which doesn't stop them from continuing to try to impose their "values" and "principles" on everyone else. Principles like keeping government out of the private lives of American citizens, opposing "undue government influence in people's lives" to quote a conservative member of congress, except of course, when it comes to government forcing women seeking an abortion to have vaginal ultrasounds. Or to have government pass laws to prevent gays from marrying. 

 

Had they all been more honest back in 1996, instead of persecuting gays and lesbians , what they would have passed was The Defense of Cheating on Your Wife and We Define Morality Any Way We Want Act.  It would have passed by a wide margin.

 

 

 

 

 

CNN polling, not Clinton, hit new lows.

CNN's headline was "Clinton favor ability rating hits 14 year low". Another was "New CNN poll says 57% believe Clinton not honest and trustworthy". 

Only a month ago a CNN poll showed 59% believed she was honest and trustworthy and 63% said they'd be "proud" to have Clinton as president. They don't say how it could change so dramatically without a single news event to explain it. They muse. They try and tie it to Obama's falling approval ratings. But the answer is simpler. The poll is completely bogus. 

What really happened in the last month to cause Clinton's approval rating to plummet?  The answer is nothing. Because based on CNN's history of grossly inaccurate and incompetent polling the probability is it didn't plummet at all and that it's CNN's polling that has hit new lows in incompetence not Clinton's favorability. 

Remember this is the news organization who, after Bin Laden was killed thought it was newsworthy and intelligent and informative and valuable to do a poll asking "Do you think Bin Laden is in hell"?  The result which CNN displayed without any embarrassment was that 75% said yes. Which also says something about who CNN appeals to, who they poll, who is willing to respond and who is watching.

CNN never said  if they had  a hell correspondent to verify the poll numbers but you don't need one to know that as a news organization CNN went to hell a long time ago . 

So this isn't about Clinton as much as it's about CNN and their  history at least over the last 15 years of  gross incompetence and even stupidity in their polling while their anchors and guests and analysts discuss these polls with a straight face as if they have any validity. 

CNN did a poll two days ago regarding the NSA in the wake of the Patriot Act expiring that also hit new lows in idiocy and incompetence. Their pollsters asked "Do you want NSA surveillence to continue"? The result was 63% said yes .
CNN's crack journalists concluded that meant a majority of Americans wanted to continue the bulk phone record collection exposed by Edward Snowden. 

Did CNN ask if people wanted the NSA to continue to collect all their phone records ? No. Did CNN ask if people wanted the NSA to secretly collect all their emails? No. Did CNN ask if they wanted the NSA to track all their internet activity without a warrant? No.  CNN asked if they wanted surveillance to continue as if even Edward Snowden ever advocated the end of all surveillance. That is how stupid the CNN poll is and how stupidly they framed the question. 

Then based on this, CNN concludes that Rand Paul is in big political trouble for his stand against NSA surveillance and the bulk collection of the phone records as Chris Cuomo tried to point out in an interview with a Kentucky  congressman who is a Paul supporter. Which means even  Chris Cuomo ignored CNN polling that showed Paul in a statistical dead heat with Clinton. 

Cuomo also ignored another conclusion - that if Paul is in trouble then so are the 400+ members of congress who voted overwhelmingly for the USA Freedom Act and to end the bulk phone records collection of American citizens that was at the heart of the NSA controversy exposed by Edward Snowden and that a federal judge has already ruled illegal.

That CNN's pollsters and editors didnt know enough, either out of lack of simple competence or for more nefarious reasons, to make a distinction between surveillance in general and the NSA's illegal phone records collection of U.S. citizens is just another reason to dismiss any CNN poll as lunacy and a bunch of kids playing in a sand box or having a food fight.

During the Iraq war  CNN conducted two polls which taken together would lead to the conclusion that the American people didn't value the lives of American soldiers, if you can believe that. Either that or the American people didn't know the Iraq war was being fought with live ammunition.  One poll asked if respondents supported American soldiers fighting in Iraq. Over 60% said they did . A second poll asked if they felt Iraq was worth American soldiers dying for. Over 60% said they didn't.No one at CNN said anything about the obvious moral discrepancy or that if more than  60%  supported Americans fighting in Iraq  but thought it wasn't worth  dying for what that would say about the value Americans placed on the the lives of American soldiers.  Maybe because to bring it up would have more to do with the value of a CNN poll.

The latest CNN polls are supposed to be bad news for Clinton. But they also show that only 12% of Republican voters want Rand Paul to be the Republican nominee and only 14% want Marco Rubio.   But  in CNN's poll of Clinton vs. Republican challengers head to head, Rubio gets  46% of the vote while Clinton gets 49%.  Rand Paul who yesterday was in deep political trouble over CNN's NSA poll has 47% against Clinton's 48%. So are we to believe that only 12% of Republican voters want the candidate with the best chance of beating Clinton to be the nominee? 

 A month ago a  CNN poll showed Clinton with a 17-23 pt lead over her nearest Republican  challenger.  So what happened? Are the head to head match ups an entirely new and separate  poll from the poll dealing exclusively with Clinton? If so where are Rubio's voters coming from? Or Rand Paul's?  Democrats? Independents? Aliens? Gnomes? Did CNN ask? Do they care? They don't notice anything that's an itsy bitsy witsy out of whack?  

The numbers don't add up. And neither does the one month free fall in Clinton's honesty or approval rating when there has not been a single news event to explain it. Nor the change in 63% saying they'd be "proud" to have Clinton as president only a few weeks ago to a sneering 57%  saying she is not honest or trustworthy. 

Nevertheless blind CNN anchors ignoring how preposterous the polls are taken together, instead of questioning their validity  then proceed, along with their guests, to discuss what they "mean". 

What they mean is what they have meant for years - CNN polling is the most incompetent inept unprofessional,  laughable and easily dismissed polling in the business.  They have more in common with Kafka than the Koch Brothers. And everyone from the Clinton campaign to anyone keeping an eye on politics should dismiss them. 

Polling is generally not much more than a thumbnail version of market research. The difference is that when Proctor and Gamble does market research they really want to know what people think. When CNN or many news organizations do a poll, they dont want to know what people really think, they want something to talk about. And they frame their questions and methods accordingly.  So while CNN pollsters might be good enough for CNN , they'll never be good enough for Proctor and Gamble. 

 

Patriot Act expires: Republicans scrambling for change for the meter.

The oxymoron-like named Patriot Act which was used by the NSA to surreptitiously collect phone records of every American citizen which produced no intelligence  in an NSA version of one person holding the light bulb while ten people turned the chair, expired on Sunday and so far the dire predictions by people who lied on a regular basis to congress and to the American people from the president to the Director of the NSA along with some members of congress,  have gone the way of the Mayan calendar.

 

Republicans who held up voting on the  Freedom Act passed overwhelmingly by the House which does away with the bulk phone records collection and any search without a warrant or probably cause, are now scrambling for lose change to put in the meter afraid that if they don't get the House bill passed, the party could get towed in the next election.

 

Rand Paul who shocked Republicans and some Democrats by actually standing up for something he believed in that had no political motive behind it, forced the expiration of the Patriot Act  and section 215  which was exposed by Edward Snowden who correctly believed the activity was illegal and unconstitutional about which a federal judge has already agreed. Which among other accomplishments puts Snowden about ten rungs higher  up on the food chain than CNN legal analyst Jeff Toobin who in a 2013 New Yorker article attacked Snowden and ripped him to pieces  for, among other things, only being 29 and a traitor.

 

Mitch McConnell, looking around for some spare change in the form of minor amendments to the Freedom Act already passed by the House is hoping to save face if not the constitution,by amending the House version to, in his words, "makes sure the Freedom Act works".  Thanks Mitch.

Unless the amendments really are small change, nickle and dime stuff that does nothing to alter or weaken the content and spirit of the Freedom Act which ended the bulk records collection,  a program which among other things successfully missed the Boston Marathon bombers, that too is liable to be stopped by Rand Paul and other privacy advocates. Which will leave the senate no choice but to pass the House bill as is. How long McConnell and the Republicans will spend patting their pockets looking for change is anyone's guess. For now Rand Paul is sitting in the drivers seat.

 

If there is any amendment McConnell makes to the House bill it ought to be to give Edward Snowden immunity from prosecution. And maybe a job running the NSA. But its unlikely McConnell,  the Republicans or Obama  has enough change in their pockets to do that.

 

 

 

 

 

With Iraq so much in the news, we should remember how much the news media lied about Iraq.

The lies actually started with 911 with the Bush administration trying to cover up their culpability in what was the worst case of presidential malfeasance and gross, even criminal negligence with regards to the national security of the United States in American history.

The Bush administration story was that there was nothing they could have done to have prevented 911. Two years later the 911 Commission hearings provided documentary proof that Bush, Rice and Cheney had so much intelligence, specific actionable intelligence that would have prevented the 911 attacks, there was not a cab driver in New York city who couldn't have prevented the attack with the information Bush and Rice was given, which included intelligence that Al-Qaeda was going to attack within the United States, that there were operational Al-Qaeda cells already within the United States, that Al-Qaeda had New York buildings under surveillence, that the attack was imminent, that, according to CIA intercepts of Al-Qaeda chatter, the attack was going to be "spectacular" and, the piece de' resitance, Bush and Rice was given intelligence on August 6, 2001 that the Al-Qeda attack  was going to involve the hijacking of U.S. commerical airliners. They did nothing.

Except use the attack as an excuse to invade Iraq, something the neo-cons had tried to convince Bill Clinton to do back in 1998.

Just as the news media rolled over for the Bush administration on 911 and even turned what amounted to a confession of incompetence by Condoleeza Rice when she admitted they had enough information but  " we couldn't connect the dots", into a term of art, they rolled over for Bush in Iraq and still are.

There were the New York Times famous front page stories spoon fed to Judith Miller by  Dick Cheney about Sadaam's WMD that the Times printed without lifting a finger to try and get a single second source of corroboration. The stories were rubber stamped by  Miller's Washington editor Jill Abramson (later promoted to executive editor, then fired)  and executive editor Bill Keller.  All  the stories confirming the existence of  Sadaam's WMD were false, provided by Cheney,  then used by Cheney himself citing the Times as an "independent" source confirming the existence of Sadaam's WMD which the Bush administration used to influence members of congress to vote for the war authorization.

Years later, in an online Q&A with Miller which I watched real time, Miller was asked about the fact that her reports on WMD were all wrong. Miller's response: " I'm sorry but if my source is wrong than I'm wrong".

The answer struck me as highly significant because anyone who had seen "All the President's Men" much less knew about journalistic craft,  knew that Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee insisted that Woodward and Bernstein get at least two separate sources to corroborate a  fact before they would publish a Watergate story.

 It was clear to me that Miller's use of the singular " source" and not " sources" showed how shoddy and irresponsible the Times had been in trying to get a scoop by publishing stories "confirming" Saddams' WMD as fact without any independent  corroboration. And there were plenty of sources at the time which would have disputed Cheney's claims,some from weapons inspectors like Hans Blix, some from the IAEA, and most of them reported by two reporters, Warren Stroebel and Jonathan Landay from Knight Ridder  newspapers which went unnoticed by other news outlets who instead preferred to run with the  bogus Times stories.

The Times must have recognized the significance of Miller's using "source" instead of "sources" because days later  when I went back to download a copy of the Q&A to have a copy of that particular exchange, they had doctored the transcript to change Miller's original wording from " source" to "sources". 

What we know about Iraq which the news media and some politicians are still  trying to bury is the indisputable fact that Bush and Cheney lied the country into war. And the news media as a whole and blind conservatives who accused anyone who opposed the war as being unpatriotic,  went right along with it and were instrumental in shaping public opinion about going to war.  And the news media continues to bury the truth because to admit it now is to admit their own complicity and malfeasance in spreading and promoting those lies, too afraid to contradict them which contributed  to the country being lied into war.

We know now that despite Jeb Bush's attempt at defending the Iraq invasion or Lindsay Graham saying Bush did the best he could with the intelligence he had,  the big lie still told by apologists  is that Bush received faulty intelligence about Sadaam's WMD.  The truth is there was no faulty intelligence because there was no intelligence from anyone that reported with any reasonable degree of certainty that Saddaam had WMD. None. The only faulty intelligence was at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And speaking of intelligence,lest anyone forget given the current negotiations with Iran and their nuclear program, when former ambassador Joe Wilson went to Niger to try to confirm for the CIA if Bush and Cheney's assertion about Saddam trying to buy yellow cake uranium for an  atomic bomb was true and found that it wasn't, the Bush administration, in retaliation for Wilson's public statements blew the cover of Wilson's  wife Valerie Plame who was a covert agent for the CIA and whose undercover work involved guess what -- gathering covert intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.

 Thanks to the Bush administration's cheap political payback, exposing Plame destroyed her informant network inside Iran, 20 years in the making,  including scientists and other informants who were providing intelligence about Iran's nuclear program. Bush and Cheney destroyed that pipeline because Wilson's public statements undermined their dishonest pitch to invade Iraq. To this day the news media still ignores all  that and continues to let them all off the hook.

There is much more regarding the lies that took the U. S. to war in Iraq, which the news media promoted and still ignore to this day. 

Colin Powell's entire presentation to the UN to justify the invasion of Iraq was all based on false information given by an Iraqi  informer code named Curveball, who defected to Germany and  who, in return for asylum gave German intelligence information about Saddam's so called WMD. German intelligence was certain the informer was telling them what he thought they wanted to hear to gain asylum and  told the CIA that none of the information checked out and in fact they had learned the informant had lied about his own background and was an alcoholic.  

All of Curveball's  "intelligence" was passed on to the CIA station chief  in Germany as a courtesy with the caveat that none of it checked out and none of it was believed to be true. The station chief passed the information on to CIA headquarters who in turn passed it on to the Bush administration along with the same caveat,  that nothing checked out or was believed to be true. Yet Cheney fed that information to Colin Powell without telling him that the information was likely false.  Powell used what he  was given by Cheney and  it was that false "intelligence"  by Curveball that made up Powell's entire UN presentation.  To this day Powell considers that presentation to be the lowest moment of his life.

In another instance, former conservative Republican House majority leader Dick Armey who opposed the Iraq war authorization and was going to vote against it  said that Dick Cheney personally told him they had intelligence that Saddam had developed a nuclear suitcase bomb capable of destroying Washington  D.C.It was enough to get Armey to change his vote. To this day  that lie is also ignored by the mainstream news media and current GOP presidential hopefuls.

Florida Democratic senator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut said that to get his vote former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, told him that they had intelligence that Sadaam had drones capable of reaching the east coast of the United States with the capability of launching a chemical or biological attack. That was enough to get Nelson's vote too. A few years ago  Nelson learned about an Air Force intelligence report that was intentionally kept from him that stated that Saddam did have drones but their range was only 250 miles, were made of wood and had no military or attack capability. Nelson's press conference expressing his outrage went largely ignored by the news media. The same news media that was SRO for a press conference about Anthony Weiner's online sex chats.

Nothing has changed.  News media outlets like CNN  ignore the proof of Bush adminstration lies that drove the country to war because to bring it up also necessitates bringing up their own journalistic cowardice, malfeasance and culpability which allowed the invasion of Iraq to happen. And they are still ducking.

While Bush,Cheney and Rice are ultimately responsible for their horrendous dishonesty and judgement in lying the country into war and President Obama's decision making and judgement regarding Isis has been a disaster that has gotten worse every day, none of it could have happened without the news media rolling over and playing dead.   Isis is running rough shod in Iraq and Syria and causing death and destruction on a mass scale. Yet Wolf Blitzer in trying to carry water for Obama keeps trying to blame all of it on  the failures of the Iraqi army when the truth is Obama was told by everyone in a position to know from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and others that it was essential to keep a residual U.S. force of about 10,000 in Iraq. Obama refused. 

When Lindsay Graham pointed out the need to now send U.S. ground troops if Isis is to be defeated, Blitzer, in a response that smacked both of his own cowardice and obnoxious willingness to take cheap shots to make himself look tough and that he was defending the troops  said "even if it means U.S. soldiers coming back in body bags"?

Today the news media still refuses to hold anyone in power accountable including themselves.  And a news media who wont tell the truth about itself can't be trusted to tell the truth about anything else. Had the news media been willing to do their jobs with  a fraction of the courage the soldiers who fought there did theirs, those soldiers probably wouldn't have been there in the first place.  And the mess that is now Iraq, never would happened, a mess made even worse by Obama rejecting the advice of people a lot smarter and more knowledgeable than he is to arm the moderate Syrian rebels to stop Isis from the very start. 

The upshot is that the news media supported an invasion of Iraq when it was a lie and is now beating the drum for no U.S. combat forces on the ground when that might very well be necessary to destroy Isis because, like in 2002, they think that's where public opinion is. And Obama panders to the media and many in the media reciprocate. 

Obama got a lot of mileage during the 2008 primaries by claiming he was against the war in Iraq from the beginning and how history  proved he was right and had the  judgement to be president . His judgement could not have been more wrong and as we have seen all through his presidency, his statement was not exactly honest.

As a state senator, not a U.S. senator Obama was against the war. But for all the wrong reasons. Though not privy to any of the lobbying and phony intelligence  U.S. senators were subjected to, and of course not having a vote and so not having to worry about consequences, Obama accepted and believed  the existence of WMD in Iraq and  still was against invading Iraq because he didnt believe the U.S. should intervene in the affairs of another country. Had Sadaam actually had WMD as Bush and  Cheney were selling and  as Obama believed, he would have been a grave threat justifying the invasion.  So Obama's  judgement  and position was wrong on both counts, a judgement we are seeing manifest itself in dealing with Isis who, quite frankly, is winning in both Iraq and Syria. And a wrong headed judgement, as with Bush, the news media still ignores. 

Why all this matters now is because too many people in the news media, congress and the White House are using Bush's  war in Iraq and its disastrous consequences as a basis for decisions on what to do now in terms of destroying Isis. We've heard things like "learning the lessons of Iraq" and learning from the "mistakes of the past". The lessons to be learned from the mistakes of the past is simple: don't lie.

The news media who were so influential in taking the country to war by spreading those lies are trying to make up for their past mistakes by going in the opposite direction. Which could be another mistake. 

Obama recently sent out Defense Secretary Ash Carter to pin the blame for more failures on the Iraqi army by saying its up to them to fight for their country. It is. But this is Obama and other politicians getting it backwards.  Because  this is not about fighting for or defending Iraq. It's about whether Isis is or will be a serious threat to U.S. national security . 

Carter said,"they're (the Iraqi army) the ones who have to defeat Isil". They are? And what if they don't?

If Isis is in fact a real threat to U.S. security at home, or will be if not destroyed,  and it's looking like they could be,  then  it's not about saying that U.S. troops shouldn't be doing what the Iraqi army needs to do for itself, it's about not asking the Iraqi army to do our fighting for us. 

What just might be needed is sending enough  U.S. ground troops to Iraq to destroy Isis if in fact U.S. national security is at stake. 

And Carter's comment could be further proof of what everyone from John McCain to Robert Gates , Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta has believed from the beginning   - Obama has no strategy for destroying Isis. He can't even correctly define the problem and if he can't do that then he can't solve it. 

The American military as always has the will and capability to defend America against it's violent enemies when necessary. And as one congressman and an Iraq war veteran put it, that's what the American military is there for.  Despite Wolf Blitzer's obnoxious  " body bags" comment in trying to do now what he didnt have the courage to stand up and do in 2002 when it mattered. Which could now  put  Blitzer crying wolf and Obama and the news media as a whole, on the wrong side of what might actually need to be done.  Once again.