Yer Energy Report

September 26th, 2006

If you ask my friends when, exactly, I began to channel Chicken Little and started screaming THIS IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL they’ll tell you it was early in the game, almost before there was one — pre Bush’s stealing of the election. One of the reasons that I began an early study of psychology, and found an effortless home in astrology, was because even as a tyke I could spot wrong instantly. And usually, the wrong-er a person was, I’d noted, the more pleasant the packaging — the darker the intent, conscious or un, the more what I saw with my eyes failed to match what I felt in my gut. Turns out, years later, the psychologists would name this cognitive dissonance — and I’d learned to pay attention early. This talent has been an invariably accurate compass to follow on my journey here on Sweet Terra.

What I’m noticing today in my regular rounds through Blogistan is that while there are not nearly so many people out there as wrong in their political assessment as there were a few years back — those that remain wrong are seriously, darkly and dangerously wrong … and fanatically hysterical about it. That’s what makes this moment so tricky. In this plane of polarity, when Light amps, dark does too.

You know that one of the analogies for change that I’ve appreciated over the years is that of pouring fresh water into a glass of old, stagnant liquid … the dark dregs at the bottom have to rise to the top and overflow before the glass can fill. That’s where we are.

I expect you’ve noticed that the Pub’s don’t even attempt to make sense anymore, and Dubby has all but given up the notion that he can “convince us” — well, that was all window dressing for the project [read that, coup] anyhow. And the lies continue as thick as ants at a picnic and as easy to spot.

Condi Rice, for instance, gave us a knee-jerk response on how the Big Dog didn’t leave any plans to fight Al Qaeda — she lied. I snagged a cartoon years back that showed the Clintons walking out the front door of the White House as George throws the plans to catch Osama out the window into a dumpster — if I remember correctly, Bill was asking Hil what a ‘circular file’ was.

We knew way back then who was serious about terrorism and who wasn’t — and rewriting history takes more skill … dare I suggest nuance … than is found in the inner sanctum of these two-bit crooks. “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past,” said George Orwell. Too bad for the Bushies that so MANY of us have read 1984 since they took office — “Orwellian” is now a mainstream adjective. So, said as the Dub might understand it … that tired old dog don’t hunt. Even if the public isn’t sure what to do next, or whom to trust … they know they’re being played. The Bushies are clever, but they’re not bright. They’re canny, but they’re not intelligent. They’re consistently on message — but the message is swiss cheese, you could drive a truck through the holes. As was famously said, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

A couple of years ago, we were moaning that the public had been shanghaied into believing all the junk-thought it was being force fed while we were “voices in the wilderness.” That’s not our issue, today. Change is here … the fresh water has mixed with the murky and created a fearful ‘new reality’ brew we’re still loathe to swallow — and DON’T.

In this new reality, the cogs of radical government are still turning and it appears we’re never going to be able to wrestle the little dictator down. It’s dark and murky … we’re still examining the dregs. Sure, we’re tired and frustrated, but we’re making progress — if you think you’re exhausted by all this, think about the administration having to work harder every day to keep a lid on a nation readying itself to explode. If there are any stupid-human tricks during this election, you’ll hear the jiggler of that pressure cooker whistling loud and clear … and we can pretty much count on them, can’t we. If the Right thinks that Clinton’s little meltdown was “crazed,” that his argument with Wallace was “heated” … they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The Righty’s are going to get meaner, we know that, and those who follow them mindlessly will amp up their hateful message; fear is a potent motivator. But that fresh water is continuing to flood in — trust your gut, follow your instincts — you’ll know when and where you need to add to the mix, who you can trust and who needs to be avoided. Keep pouring in your Light, keep speaking your Truth — and don’t be afraid … it’s why you came to this party.

Friend Keith shows us how, first piece below. There’s Condi’s shuffling comments after that, then some examples of how the game is morphing, things we should notice. Raw Story is readying to post the Clinton-era plans, the one’s Condi said he didn’t have — so much for “rewriting history.”

I’ve said before that Light wins. Light wins because Love wins. It may not be the loudest, shrillest, most attention-grabbing energy around … but it’s like oxygen, we can’t live without it. The progressives are those who believe that every person is entitled to human dignity, every child deserves safety and nurture, and any death diminishes us all. The struggle is the struggle, but the outcome is sure.

Remember:

“When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Think of it, always.”

~ Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

Jude

CLINTON: “I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked: Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole? I want to know how many you asked: Why did you fire Dick Clarke?”

WALLACE: “We asked — we asked.”

~ President Bill Clinton responding to Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, 9/24/06

VERSUS

Since 2001, Chris Wallace has interviewed the top national security officials from the Bush administration — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hadley — 42 times. According to a database search, none of them have been asked about the USS Cole or why Clarke was demoted.

~ ThinkProgress.org, 9/23/06, 9/23/06

Olbermann’s Special Comment: Are YOURS the actions of a true American?
Nicole Belle
Monday, September 25th, 2006
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/25/olbermanns-special-comment-are-yours-the-actions-of-a-true-american/
[open link for video]

Keith pulled no punches and launched another smack down on Bush and FOX News…

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s “portable public chorus” has described his predecessor’s tone as “crazed.”

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s “marketplace of ideas” is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.

The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

“At least I tried,” he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. “That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried.”

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”

The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest “pass” for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history!

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs — some of them, 17 years old — before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for — if not the Great Depression itself — then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.
Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War — though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this President.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.

But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except… for this:

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is — not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired — but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for “e-mailing” you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth un-told… about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about Bin Laden.

He was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I — in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist — and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.

Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with “The Path to 9/11.”

Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it — who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews — have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for Bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense — why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20th of that year? For mentioning Bin Laden by name as he did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie “Wag The Dog.”

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri — the future Attorney General — echoed Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been “distracted” by the Lewinsky witch-hunt — who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt? Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?

Who preempted them… in order to strangle us with the trivia that was… “All Monica All The Time”?

Who… distracted whom?

This is, of course, where — as is inevitable — Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton… but by the same people who got you… elected President.

Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it… we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us “safe” ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.
And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush — you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles… wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair — writing as George Orwell — gave us in the novel “1984.”

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…

“Power is not a means; it is an end.

“One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

“The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power.”

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.

“We must disenthrall ourselves.”

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence. He might well have.
“We must disenthrall ourselves — and then… we shall save our country.”

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date… to save… our… country.
—

The “free pass” has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush…

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture — which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.And there it is, sir:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

I’m K.O., good night, and good luck. ++

Clinton did not leave plans to fight al Qaeda: Rice
Reuters
Tue Sep 26, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/p8ygt

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice strongly disputed a claim by former President Bill Clinton that he left a comprehensive plan to fight al Qaeda when his term ended.

In a heated interview aired on “Fox News Sunday,” the former president accused the Bush administration of doing far less that he did to stop al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the September 11 attacks.

Clinton said he had “battle plans” drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban and launch a full-scale search for bin Laden.

But Rice, who was national security advisor at the time of the September 11 attacks, strongly disagreed with Clinton’s version of events during an interview on Monday with the New York Post.

“We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda,” Rice said in a transcript of her comments released by the State Department.

“For instance, big pieces were missing, like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren’t going to get Afghanistan,” Rice said.

Asked whether she thought Clinton was a liar, Rice replied: “No, I’m just saying that, look, there was a lot of passion in that interview.” ++

Authoritarianism and Theocracy - Bloggers Are Sounding A Warning
Dave Johnson
Sep 25 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/998

Today in Bill Clinton’s Bipartisan Love-In Blows Up in His Face, Arianna writes,

“Hooray! Good for Bill Clinton. He finally called Fox News and the right-wing on their BS, right? Well, sort of.

I’m glad the Chris Wallace interview is flying all over the internet, but I really hope that one person who will watch it over and over again is Bill Clinton. And that on the fifth or sixth viewing it might occur to him that the more cover he gives Bush and his cronies, the more they’re able to increase and entrench their power. Power they use to destroy everything that Clinton purports to stand for.”

There is a fundamental point here. I, and many others, think that the Democratic leadership has profoundly misjudged the nature and intentions of the conservative movement. John Dean, in his book Conservatives Without Conscience, warns that we are witnessing the rise of an authoritarian government, and Kevin Phillips, in American Theocracy, warns that the current Republican leadership is intent on bringing about a theocracy. This is not politics-as-usual. THIS is what the bloggers are so shrill about.

In March I wrote,

Maybe, just maybe, they mean the things they are saying. And I think this warning about the extreme things the Right is saying is a big part of what political blogging is about.

… So political bloggers are more likely than others to be visiting websites and forums where right-wingers more openly discuss their ideas, or are more likely to be listening to Limbaugh and others on the radio. And what we are reading and hearing is frightening. The things they are saying to each other are DIFFERENT from what they are saying to the public. The things they are writing and saying are extreme and violent and subversive. It is not like what we as Americans are used to reading and hearing.

The things the Republicans are saying and doing are so extreme that regular people refuse to believe it when you try to warn them about what is happening.

… Bloggers are trying to warn the public that what is going on in America is DIFFERENT from politics-as-usual. The bloggers have been trying to get the Democratic leadership and the media to understand this. We are seeing something new to America forming, something dangerous to democracy. The “pendulum” is not swinging back.

… When will the Democratic leadership begin to realize that the extreme things the Republicans are saying might be what they mean to do?

The signs are all around us — take it seriously.

Watch your backs. ++

Propriety and paranoia in the empire
Robert Jensen
Sep 25 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1011

After appearing on FOX News this weekend to defend Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s speech at the United Nations, I got the usual assortment of fair-and-balanced emails from viewers, many of whom were critical of my support of “this Satanic barbarian,” as one of my critics put it.

That email in response to my appearance on “Heartland with John Kasich” ended with an invitation (reproduced here exactly):

“You can KISS MY A** you faggot piece of sh**.”

My focus here is not on the juvenile and hostile nature of the message; anyone who writes or speaks about controversial subjects can expect these kinds of angry responses, especially in the age of email when people’s emotional reactions can be dispatched in a matter of seconds, without adequate time for reflection.

Instead, I’m intrigued by the choice of the ** to shield me from offensive language. The writer used the ** for these two common terms that, while perhaps vulgar to some ears, are relatively mild in the contemporary vernacular. Yet the writer uses “faggot” — a cruel term meant not only to insult gay men but often used to convey a physical threat and/or challenge to their basic humanity — without apparent concern for its obscenity. Some curious values underlie that decision about what constitutes acceptable language in political dialogue.

Call it the triumph of propriety over humanity.

Whatever the intensity of this man’s hatred of U.S. leftists and gays, it’s nothing compared with his fear of foreign leaders who criticize the United States. He doesn’t interpret the Venezuelan president’s critique of U.S. military domination of the world as an expression of support for an international order rooted in law and morality. Rather my pen pal thinks Chavez is out not simply to critique the United States and its leaders, but “to help destroy America.”

Call this the triumph of paranoia over analysis.

Two things are obvious about the relationship of the United States to the countries of Latin America: (1) no Latin American nation has had the ability or motivation to destroy the United States, while (2) the United States has long had the diplomatic, economic, and military power to intervene in Latin American nations and has used that power often — typically to the benefit of elites in the United States and to the detriment of ordinary citizens there. Republicans and Democrats alike have pursued policies of coercive meddling in the affairs of our neighbors to the south, many of whom have reason to be nervous today.

No doubt Chavez pays attention to the steady stream of hostile rhetoric out of Washington, and he likely remembers that in the 2004 campaign he was condemned by both George Bush and John Kerry, as the Democratic nominee tried to out-hawk the Republican. Despite the fact Chavez was democratically elected and remains immensely popular, especially among the poor in his nation, he is routinely referred to as “autocratic” or a “strongman” in the United States. I’m reasonably sure it didn’t escape Chavez’s attention that the coup plotters who in 2002 attempted to oust him had the strong backing of the United States.

Yet when an independent-minded Latin American leader — who has himself been the target of a campaign by the United States to remove him from office — asserts that international law (such as the fundamental prohibition against aggressive war) should apply to all nations, including the United States, such a statement becomes evidence of a plot to destroy an apparently vulnerable America. Some curious logic underlies that conclusion.

This combination of an abandonment of humanity and a deepening paranoid fear is enough to drive such people to fantasies of assassination. My correspondent continued:

“You and your left wing ilk are what is wrong with this once great nation. Personally, I would love to see someone put a bullet between Hugo Chavez’ eyes, and another in the head of that Satanic bastard Ahmadinejad, and a third in your own stupid looking pumpkin head.”

I don’t take this to be an actual threat, of course, and I’m not trying to paint all those who oppose Chavez and his policies as irrational and vengeful. This email is from one man in a nation of nearly 300 million; it’s not my goal to pick out the most hateful response I received and pretend that is how all right-wingers think.

But it’s also true that I get a steady stream of email in this same vein, as do all the people I know on the left who write and speak critically about U.S. empire-building. While this particular man is angrier than most, he represents a real position in U.S. political discourse these days — an odd combination of a superficial propriety that masks an underlying viciousness, and a delusional paranoia that undermines the inability to analyze.

Reasonable people can disagree, and disagree passionately, yet politics can proceed in a healthy manner when there is a shared respect for people’s dignity and a commitment to rational argument. When those two qualities are absent, politics becomes either a freak-show distraction or a breeding ground for violence. In other words, democratic politics becomes impossible.

Yes, it’s true that in other periods in history our politics has been raucous and violent. Certainly the great progressive social movements used harsh language to condemn injustice and were sometimes willing to make the political struggle physical. But in this case, the confrontational style is not in service of expanding the scope of freedom and justice but is deployed to prop up a thoroughly unjust distribution of power and resources in the world.

If the combination of this superficial holier-than-thou moralism with an ignorance-based paranoia were idiosyncratic to marginal characters who fire off email rants after being primed by right-wing TV shows, maybe we could chuckle at them. The problem is that this stance is hardly marginal. Think about how many U.S. politicians take positions that, while less harsh, reflect that same mindset. Think Pat Robertson, who regularly condemns gays and lesbians, and openly called for Chavez’s assassination earlier this year. Remember that Robertson, who runs a television network and a powerful political machine, made a serious bid for the 1988 Republican nomination for president.

It’s a cliché among pundits these days that U.S. politics is too polarized, but there’s nothing inherently dangerous about sharply divergent views jockeying for position in a democratic society. The real threat is in how this fusion of propriety and paranoia can trump humanity and analysis.

We might worry about whether that’s what animates the real bastards and barbarians. Maybe that is the truly Satanic force being unleashed in this world. ++

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity.

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Entry Filed under: Political Waves