Kelly

Anyone remember the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak?  And why is the Department of Homeland Security suddenly in the medical business?

Joseph Marohl

The Greek myth of King Midas concerns a man whose wish to turn everything he touches to gold is granted by the gods. At first, everything is OK. He has a palace made of gold now, gold dinnerware, formerly marble statuary, now all pure and precious gold. Then things go wrong. Gold potato chips—uh-uh. Solid gold socks—no good in cold weather. Gold kitty cat—oops. Finally, he turns his daughter to gold.

So.

A couple of weeks ago I bawled my eyes out watching frumpy Susan Boyle sing “I Dreamed a Dream” and the jaded audience forced to swallow their sneers and condescension. It was a glorious television moment—an example of the way TV can take an ordinary person, give her an extraordinary opportunity, and, with the aid of some backstage cheerleading and artful crosscutting between audience and singer, create a gem-like encomium to working-class women and men.

Further, YouTube made this little moment available for all the world to see, even those of us who don’t get Britain’s Got Talent on TV. Long live YouTube.

But, of course, this wasn’t the end of the story. Boyle popped up on American TV via CBS’s Early Show the next week—along with Access Hollywood, etc., etc., etc.

Then she got a makeover—unruly eyebrows be gone, enter hair dye and more fashionable clothes. OK, fine, the girl deserves a makeover, if that’s what she wants.

Then, of course, there had to be commentary on the same—Before the makeover, NPR’s Talk of the Nation debated whether she ought to have one.

Of course, the debates have proliferated since then: Had she had the makeover before her TV appearance, would she have hit the same emotional chords with viewers? What are the various imperfections of her lovely voice? Had she really, truly never been kissed? Did a 12-year-old Welsh boy blow her out of the water with his rendition of “Who’s Loving You?” Was she really all that nice and cheerful anyway? Everything but (though it’s on its way, I’m telling you) Just who the hell does this bitch think she is?

Last week, on NPR, again, somebody expressed how absolutely shocked he was that nobody, nobody, was making any money off the Boyle phenomenon—not the makers of Britain’s Got Talent, not YouTube, not even (unsurprisingly last on the list) Susan Boyle! It was almost as if to say: If all my tears are not making somebody rich, what was the fucking point?

All this supports my contention that mass media’s Midas touch is also its Achilles’ heel.

Television can show us the Rodney King beating, the collapse of the Twin Towers, and stranded New Orleans citizens on their rooftops in the middle of a flood—and charge our emotions with poignant moments we may never have visualized on our own.

Yet television also has the tendency to run anything it touches into the ground. The bright new face we cheered for a year ago becomes, through a process of tireless reiteration, the jerk you can’t get rid of, no matter which channel you turn to.

The repetition of emotionally charged images has two effects, usually in tandem: exaltation of feelings as ends to themselves and desensitization leading to devaluation.

I’ve long argued that the sex and violence people complain of on television does not hold a candle to the sex and violence of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. What differs, obviously, is television’s mechanical reduplication and near incessant replay of that sex and violence. I dare say that, in just eighteen years, more people have seen Rodney King get the shit beat out of him than ever contemplated, in over 2,400 years, Oedipus gouging his eyeballs out with his mother’s brooch.

In Greek society, Oedipus’ blinding was performed offstage, but described in chilling grisly detail by a messenger. And how many times did Athenians witness this appalling carnage? Probably only once … in a lifetime.

But, thanks to television and the Internet, nothing has to be “once in a lifetime” again. No tender, inspirational moment escapes their gaze or, in a matter of 200 or so replays, their transformation of it from gold back to dross. “Nothing gold can stay”? Think again, Robert Frost. It can stay and stay and stay, until you’re sick the hell of it.

In all this, I mean no criticism of Boyle, or of her sincerity, talent, or appearance. I hope she records an album and (at last!) makes some money off all her recent attention. It’s only a matter of time, though, before the publicity cloys.

We live in a consumerist culture, so chewing things up and spitting them out has become second nature to many of even the best of us.

I kind of hope Boyle takes a lesson from Jessica Lynch six years ago (remember her?) and the grieving student body of Virginia Tech two years ago (remember them?), who—in different ways, of course—firmly yet politely asked that the spotlight be turned away from them, so that they could go on with their lives.

Joseph Marohl

I appreciate the improvement in tone of the Obama administration over its immediate predecessor, for example, Obama’s statement in Turkey that America, though enriched by its Christian population, is “not a Christian nation”; even the President’s espousal of his personal faith has, so far, avoided the arrogant display of ignorance and bullying bluster of Bush.

Obama has lifted bans on stem-cell research and the abortion bans linked under Bush to international aid. On Friday, Obama condemned homophobia in particular no less than intolerance in general in a speech at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum—an inclusiveness that is poignant in light of the surge in gay bashing in the past decade and the growth of hate groups in America since his election.

All these examples speak of a bright new spirit in the leadership and values of our nation.

But President Obama has everything to gain or lose over the issue of whether to investigate those in power who promoted or condoned the use of torture of terror suspects.  So far, he appears to be failing a crucial test of integrity.

Fox TV has repeatedly criticized the President’s release of formerly classified memos showing the government’s deliberate attempt to whitewash torture techniques and to approve specific techniques, namely waterboarding, that have been used as torture since at least the Spanish Inquisition and condemned by American military courts trying foreign war criminals for the past 65 years. Fox TV pundits say that the President’s act is politics, a threat to security, an aid to the nation’s enemies.

The White House has defended its action on the basis that the information had already appeared in the media—in the New York Review of Books and elsewhere. Besides, precautions were taken to blacken out names, supposedly to protect the innocent or the legally covert. And, unlike the Valerie Plame “outing” in 2003, the White House appears to have little to gain politically from the release of this information.

The burning question is—What does the President intend to do with this information?

In his original statement to the press, Obama exempted CIA operatives who participated in torture but did so with an understanding that they were acting within certain legal bounds. In World War II and other cases, soldiers were prosecuted only for exceeding the bounds of laws existing at the time—“following orders” was a legitimate defense that many Nazis who did not just follow orders tried illegitimately to use to save their necks at Nuremberg.

Obama can reasonably justify not prosecuting low-level personnel—unlike the 2004 attempt to quiet the Abu Ghraib scandal, where investigations and prosecutions did not rise higher than low-ranking GIs.

Then last Sunday, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel announced that the Bush policymakers, namely John Yoo and Jay Bybee, whose support of torture is documented in the released memos, would likewise be exempt from further investigation and prosecution. But then later White House aides intimated that the President did “not rule out legal sanctions for the Bush lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the techniques.”

Troublingly, in public addresses, Obama has echoed Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan’s dribble that we should not waste time, money, and energy to “look back” to offenses in the past. (As one commenter to Noonan’s original statement put it: “Great news for hit-and-run drivers.”)

Obama told an enthusiastic crowd of CIA employees, “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn.” But the government’s detailing of specific torture techniques and fostering an air of institutional and public acceptance of what it euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques” can hardly be called a simple mistake.

On Tuesday, an internal memo by Dennis Blair, Obama’s national intelligence director, was publicized, stating, “High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” Blair seems to support at least the underpinning assumption that the Yoo-Bybee interrogation policy was effective.  Obama, in turn, has left the matter in the hands of Attorney General Eric Holder, who is less shy of the word “torture” and has called for the release of even more memos detailing the U.S. government’s support and defense of torture.

To my mind, torture is a bigger issue than the economy. The cost of investigating and prosecuting those of both political parties who were actively or tacitly behind the senseless, brutal, and unjustified beatings of detainees fraudulently in the name of the American way of life and at the expense of justice-loving American citizens is worth more than ten General Motors and fifty Bank of Americas.

And if we taxpayers could fork out $6.2 million to investigate a blowjob in the Oval Office, we owe at least as much to our sense of ourselves as a just, moral, tolerant, and humane people.

Government funds are at least as justly spent in supporting the rule of law as in supporting military actions abroad and sustaining economic growth.

One of the reasons we elect a President every four years is to permit the opportunity to investigate and legally address the flaws—both simple mistakes and flagrant illegalities—of the previous administration. If he or she does not do so, why bother with term limits or even elections?

Our nation’s much-praised propensity for “smooth transitions” distinctly implies that we transition to something new and different from its precedent—not continuation of the same, and not erasure of recent memories of injustice and lawlessness.

If Obama does not address the wrongs of the previous administration, he betrays the fundamental reason for his (or any new President’s) election: change.

If he does not push the investigation and prosecution of injustices committed in the name of America, he does nothing to build the nation’s reputation for democracy and rule of law.

If he does not look into charges of wrongdoing in the Bush administration, even if he  and (less likely) his political party could remain blameless of those wrongs, he furthers the erosion of American values and liberties and, in this case, leaves torture as a tool for future leaders with a bent towards tyranny and a cruel streak.

Allison Bricker

Hello fellow readers, it seems like ages since my last post here on the Smoking Argus. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to send me well-wishes and words of encouragement regarding my counter to the M.I.A.C report. I promise to personally respond to each one however it may take me awhile so please do not feel slighted if my response has not been immediate.

Over the past week and after the hoopla over the tea parties died down, it occured to me to take a frank look at how far “The Liberty Movement” has come in just the last two-years. It is indeed an exciting time to be part of the liberty movement especially for those who remember when the mere mention of the Constitution was dismissed outright. Thus, I hope you enjoy my latest video editorial and look forward to your comments.

Joseph Marohl

Karl Rove, echoed by many other Republican talking heads, tells us that investigating torture (not torturing itself) is the moral equivalent of a military dictatorship.

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Business students in India are reading Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf to pick up on the Fuhrer’s management techniques—10,000 copies of the book have sold in the last six months in New Delhi alone.

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Within a month, two American fifth-graders, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and Jaheem Herrera, hanged themselves after being taunted for being perceived as gay—after guardians of the boys pleaded with school officials to take action against bullying by other school children.

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Our new friends and allies in the Middle East, the Iraqi militia, reportedly are gluing shut the anuses of arrested homosexuals and then forcing them to drink a diarrhea-inducing drink, causing an excruciating death. These vicious acts, currently numbered at 60, stem from recent religious decrees demanding the death penalty for homosexuality.

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Sci-fi author and Mormon Times columnist Orson Scott Card has joined the board of the anti-same-sex-marriage, anti-homosexual National Organization for Marriage (NOM)—last July he wrote, “Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down.”

Joseph Marohl

Texans like Rick Perry, Chuck Norris, and Ron Paul are talking to the media about secession possibilities—and folks apparently take the bluster seriously. How serious are they? Joaquin Phoenix serious? Stephen Colbert serious? Or Jefferson Davis serious?

Norris already has his sights on the presidency of Texas, having played a Texas Ranger for eight years on TV.

Paul seems even to be under the impression that the United States of America “seceded” from Great Britain. Is Texas a colony, and nobody told me? Weren’t Texans allowed to vote in 2008? Weren’t their votes counted? Didn’t their 34 electoral votes go to McCain?

In 2000 and 2004 several high-profile lefties and serious liberals threatened to move out of the country if Bush won the Presidency. I’m not sure what happened. Did they? I don’t recall any follow-up in the press, though I’m aware that Johnny Depp lived in France for a good part of the last decade, for whatever reasons beyond the obvious one: Vanessa Paradis.

And how many anti-Bush expatriates gave up their U.S. citizenship, or even threatened to do so? Any?

But I don’t recall any state, however left-leaning, threatening to secede from the union during the eight years of Bush’s Presidency. Correct me if I’m wrong.

So why is it that liberals—supposedly the collectivists in the pack—get pissed off and threaten to move away on their lonesome; but conservatives—supposedly the rugged individualists—insist on everybody else in their state having to vamoose with them? (It follows, though, in a way, since a good many conservatives believe that if they personally do not want to have an abortion, nobody should be allowed to have an abortion.)

And didn’t 44 percent of Texas voters vote for Obama? What would happen to them? Would they, like the Loyalists of 1776, be tarred and feathered? Would they, like 20 percent of the Loyalists in 1783 —including thousands of black Loyalists—at least those who were freed from slavery by the British and not recaptured by their Patriot masters, move to Canada, the Bahamas, and elsewhere?  (Iowa?)

And, besides, during the Revolutionary War, Patriots outnumbered Loyalists 4 to 1, whereas in Texas the ratio is somewhat closer to even. It might be difficult to tar and feather 44 percent of the population, even if they are Democrats.

I’m inclined to think the secession talk is bullplop, and I’m a bit shocked that anyone would invest any emotion—outrage or hell-yeah—in it. Coming from the mouths of Republicans, it sounds like a threat to take all their toys up and go home. Texas doesn’t want to play anymore.

So far, my favorite response has been actor Steven Weber’s: “Hey, Gov. Perry: don’t let Democracy hit you on the ass on your way out!”

Nate Silver projects that, without Texas, Democrats could have a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate. Good news for hardshell partisans, perhaps, but I prefer a divided government for, ideally, the invaluable dialogue on important issues, not at all for the real-world impasse of political games-playing.

All of this bluster has some serious repercussions, to be sure. They are hard to see, though, for all the comic relief bubbling up from Republican leadership—as denuded now, post Bush, as the Wizard after Toto pulled back the curtain.

Except perhaps for Christian theocracy, some form of libertarianism looks like the only viable move for the G.O.P. right now. And if all libertarian-minded Republicans from the 49 other states flocked to an independent Federal Republic of Texas, we could end up with two one-party governments lobbing missiles (or, more likely, only IOUs) over the Red River.

Jeff Lewis

This past week we witnessed the “Tea Bag” Tax Protest. It was an orchestrated event that was co-opted, or hijacked by rightwing extremists and Republican conservatives from Ron Paul’s vocal, but normally civilized followers. The purpose for the protest was designed to draw attention, ostensibly, to multiple contemporary evils: excessive taxation, excessive government spending, and excessive insensitivity from our national political leadership.

The “Protest” allowed participants the chance to use inflammatory rhetoric that often characterizes such gatherings.  One of the unique aspects of this cause celeb was the contradictory outcries of “Socialism” and “Fascism”, plus numerous Obama hate messages.  It reminded me of the conundrum one of my innovative professors in college once posed in a political theory lecture that began with the rhetorical question, “Can any one succinctly explain the difference between communism and capitalism?”  After several seconds of deafening silence, he answered by saying, “In Communism, man exploits man.  In Capitalism, it’s just the opposite.”

The national network television news media in general acknowledged that the protest was grass roots, in nature. This aspect was driven home repeatedly by the Republican Party leadership and the Fox television news personalities, two entities often in political lockstep, prior to and after the event.  House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), called the event “Astroturf” because of the overt push it received from fat cat donors and Fox network talking heads.

While the President participated in a gathering of Western Hemisphere political leaders on the island of Trinidad, the release of the DOJ “torture memos” started a firestorm that, I believe, has the potential to sprout a genuine grass roots movement. Obama’s progressive supporters on the Democratic side of the aisle, or his own political family, are aggressively circulating a petition on the internet calling for the prosecution of all those governmental agents in the previous administration who participated in the policy that created the alleged tortuous acts.  The petition’s import is in direct opposition to Obama and the Attorney General’s promise not to prosecute any CIA operatives that may have direct involvement in carrying out these acts, as described in graphic detail in the previously classified DOJ documents.  Obama and Eric Holder have promised those CIA participants taxpayer supported legal defense, because the perpetrators were acting on advice from the DOJ, or, just carrying out orders from higher-ups.  The Nuremburg trials, immediately following WWII, featured prosecutions of Nazi’s, “Just following orders.”

One of the most compelling aspects of Obama’s campaign was his representation that among the “change” he would bring about was his vow to restore America’s moral authority in such matters. As he positioned himself against unjust prosecution of a misguided war, he promised transparency in his leadership in direct contradiction to Hillary and later McCain.  On Wednesday night, progressive stalwart, Keith Olberman of MSNBC, vehemently editorialized on Obama’s decision in this area and unequivocally stated, “Mr. President, you are wrong!”  Ooops!  Up jumped the first “family feud” in the Obama bunkhouse.  Among the graying and balding heads of Obama progressives are veterans of “real grass movement” protests from the 60’s.  Millions of these folks were on the front lines on behalf of civil rights and anti-war (Vietnam) conflagrations that occurred throughout the Republic with intensity and, on many occasions, with ferocity.  It is important to remember that Obama was born in 1961, therefore his memory of these cataclysmic struggles are not indelibly etched in his memory tapes.

At the present moment, Obama has opened a significant rift with conservatives that are outraged at his approved revelation of the previously top secret classified memos, and the bedrock of his political support, by saying he was turning a blind eye toward the perpetrators of these deeds.  Deeds, which are specifically prohibited by international treaties, of which our country is signator.  The president’s position is on a collision course.  The potential problems of this controversy are not inherited like the economic hand of cards he walked into upon his election.  Obama has chosen this present course entirely of his own volition.

In my judgment, President Obama is about to get a “real education” in presidential decision making and “grass roots movements.”

Kelly

Martina Portnaya of Russia Today interviews Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute.  Celente describes the current trends of the United States government i.e. incremental fascism, as well as the current trends of the American people in a time of economic crisis.

Joseph Marohl

Tax day (April 15th) is over, and we have been once again reminded that we Americans pay taxes, that we would rather not have to pay taxes, and that we would rather keep our own to look after our own—assuming our own is enough to do so.

I wish there were some way to have government services without paying government taxes—but my guess is that privateers in charge of police work and the monitoring of food and drug safety would be (though perhaps more efficient than the government) more expensive—and perhaps more susceptible to bribes and serving the interests of the wealthy over the common good. I say “more susceptible” because, obviously, there is some corruption already among law enforcement officers and government inspectors, though invariably bribes come from somewhere, usually from (surprise!) the private sector.

And the government has not usually been a good steward of our tax dollars or our trust. Unlike those who blame “special interests” such as welfare moms, tree-hugging environmentalists, and warm and fuzzy-thinking liberals everywhere, I tend to blame special interests like the corporate world, Wall Street, and, most especially, the war profiteers.

To be sure, World War II, the good war against fascism and genocide, made America the rich and powerful nation that it was for the remainder of the twentieth century. But unlike the present wars, started by Bush and his Republican and Democratic supporters, the Second World War was a war of cooperation between the people and the government. For instance, during the war 85 million Americans bought $185.7 billion in war bonds. Women and men unable to serve in uniform relocated to parts of the country they had never seen before in order to do office and factory work vacated by enlistees—my mother was one such person—and my father (of German heritage, who didn’t even speak English until the first grade) was quick to enlist in the U.S. Army. (Don’t even start the “real Americans” bullshit around me.)

(On the other hand, some American firms, even those active in building the “Arsenal of Democracy,” such as Ford Motors, General Motors, and Chase Manhattan Bank, had worked with the Nazis before the war and maintained operations in Germany even during the war.)

When the war ended, President Truman’s late 1946 executive order transferred the Manhattan Project’s research and facilities to private ownership—all to maintain the principle (I would say “fetish”) of free enterprise in the United States—while the U.S. federal government has continued sponsoring research in the private sectors ever since, and then buying back products for use in the military and other government sectors, often paying many times what such products would usually garner in the free market alone.

Nuclear energy has spawned growth in virtually every area of technology and science in the six decades since Truman. The profits of this one technology alone—had the American taxpayers been allowed to hold on to its patent, after huge wartime sacrifices by the people to fund this research—could perhaps reduce if not entirely erase the need for income taxes today.

Apart from the apocalyptic discoveries of the Manhattan Project, research in NASA, the U.S. military, and state university systems has contributed much to the prosperity of the nation. Costs of research failures have been swallowed by the government—and its taxpayers (“pork”). The successes, however, have been divvied out to private corporations—who, on top of receiving the fruits of research paid for by the taxpayers, pay a substantially lower tax rate than ordinary citizens, sometimes reduced to zero through tax loopholes and charitable deductions and the like.

In 1958, the federal creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) created, through the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO), the computer networking design that became, after it was commercialized in 1988, the World-Wide Web or the Internet. Only recently Time-Warner Cable planned to charge Internet users based on the amount of use—American Internet users, the ones who paid for the goddamned thing’s invention. Due to public and political outcry, Time-Warner backed down just this week.

NASA has financed the creation of new metal and glass alloys and spawned such spin-off merchandise as scratch-resistant lenses, wireless communications, freeze-dried foods, athletic shoes, virtual reality, microcomputers, laser technology, sports bras, hang gliders, quartz crystal timing, solar energy, digital imaging, the electric car, and a wide array of other useful and high-profit items.

Imagine if the American people, who financed this research through their taxes, also received at least some of the benefits of the worldwide marketing of the products stemming from this government-funded research.

Entertainment and organized crime have been the most profitable aspects of the free market not to be propped up with taxpayers’ money. And if I decided to be extra-cynical, I could add that one could make a pretty good argument that the obscenely profitable drug trade owes a debt to us taxpayers as well, through CIA operations in South America, the Vietnam war, and, most recently, Afghanistan, regaining its lead as the top producer of heroin just one year after the U.S. military deposed the Taliban.

So it seems to me that nationalization of industries directly indebted to government research and tax funding in the first place could be one way, along with more prudent budgeting by government leaders and more oversight by aware citizens, to reduce and perhaps even eliminate income taxes altogether.

Un-American. I know.

Kelly

The Cato Institute exposes the unnerving complexities of our tax code.  Happy Tax Day!