A Lesson From WikiLeaks

Of course, we learned many things from the content of the documents released by WikiLeaks (see the link in the post below for some of those), but there was also another important reveal in this process: the mainstream media rearing its subservient head. The rhetoric regarding this latest round of leaks has been astoundingly vitriolic. It has been, depending on your mood and ability to find humor in institutional idiocy, either very funny or very sad or very infuriating. (Or you could just be indifferent, I guess. But, in that case, why are you here? It's been a year now, you really should've just cut your losses and headed on over to Ashton Kutcher's twitter by now.) We've seen a number of journalists refer to WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange's "treasonous" acts (Assange is Australian), calling for Assange to be murdered by the CIA, and nearly unanimously parroting the claim that WikiLeaks has "blood on its hands" (which even the Pentagon has admitted is a baseless charge). We also have Sarah Palin asking her Facebook followers why the Obama administration is not pursuing Assange with the same level of determination with which they pursue Al-Queda.

Where is all of this anger coming from? Why is it coming so unanimously and fiercely from our nation's journalists? Take it away, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller:

Ah, right. The media is so outraged at WikiLeaks because they are doing the job of a free press, a framework in which our prestigious media outlets such as the New York Times clearly do not see themselves as operating within. Recall what Keller said in the above video, as well as the general, reflexive outrage among journalists and ask, how would a state-sponsored media behave?

Exactly the same.

Damn!

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AT1I720101130?pageNumber=1

Good'Giving

You Should Read This

I'm not even going to bother excerpting it, just head over here and read the whole thing. The article is titled "The Two Most Essential, Abhorrent, Intolerable Lies Of George W. Bush's Memoir," and focuses on how he tries in the book to spin the two decisions which history will almost certainly hold against him most prominently as evidence of the fact that he was the worst. These are, of course, his unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq and the state sponsored torture program he instituted. The article is the most exhaustive compilation of evidence of wrongdoing heading up to the Iraq war that I have seen on the internet, and shows that, as we get further and further away from the genesis of these events, a fully formed narrative of them is starting to emerge more clearly, and it is certainly not the false narrative that Bush and Cheney concocted. So hooray for truth.

Track rewiew: Kanye West - Blame Game

I never thought I’d find myself getting emotional while listening to Chris Rock. I also never thought I’d find myself 11 months into the year questioning Round and Round’s place as the best song of the year. But here I was, 11 tracks into Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” being moved in a way that is rare, and begs to be remembered.

“My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is a great album in the same way that many universally-recognized rock albums are. Think “Nevermind” or “The Blue Album”. Freakishly consistent, undeniably “good”, impossibly wide appeal that unites casual listeners and critics. When you listen to these rare albums for the first time, each song is your favorite song until the next one comes. This is how I felt about “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, except I came to a stop with the 8 minute tour de force of human emotion, “Blame Game”.

Ye comes strong with the beat and hook. Of course. John Legend drops classic Kanye-esque lines (I call you bitch as my first and last resort), over a sparse piano that reminds me of Animal Collective’s “No More Running”. After a few verses, Kanye gets all conceptual and creates the voices in his head, a bunch of warped, phased, pitched voices that come at you like a tidal wave of subconscious thought.

Throughout most of the song, Kanye treats his jealousy with narcissism. “On a bathroom wall I wrote: I’d rather argue with you than to be with someone else / I took a piss and dismiss it and went and found somebody else”. Because he can. Right? He’d rather prove his perceived worth than admit that he is trapped in love. And the trap is fucked up. Rather by his own arrogance, or his extreme jealousy, he continues to prove himself as his worst enemy.

And then there’s Chris Rock. As the song closes, Kanye calls his lost lover, only to get her voicemail. But her phone “accidentally” calls him back (lol), and he hears the “whole thing”. Its her new man’s birthday, and Rock unleashes a legendary rant about how amazing of a woman she is, from her pussy to her taste in watches. The blame game comes full circle. Who’s to blame for her ways? Yeezy, of course. Everyone should hear it for themselves, but appreciate the synthesis of story telling, heart break, jealousy, pride, and comedy. Rock does a phenomenal job playing Kanye’s modest replacement. At parts you feel heartbroken listening to it, then he says something like “who the fuck got your pussy re-upholstered?” and you can’t help but smile like an idiot. Its that feeling when you don’t know rather to laugh or to cry. Or when a song communicates itself so effectively that you can only bask in it’s awe, and feel blessed to have heard it.

Here we go

you're welcome.

I'm On A Plane

And on the internet! A first for me personally. It's kewl. Here are some things I've come across on the internet, on a plane.

This article, in the NYRB, by Zadie Smith (whose work I have been staunchly ambivalent about over the years, both fiction and non-fiction), starts off talking about The Social Network in a not-at-all interesting way, but gets more provocative on page two when discussing the actual Mark Zuckerberg and the future and impact of Facebook.

"It’s this type of kid who would think that giving people less privacy was a good idea. What’s striking about Zuckerberg’s vision of an open Internet is the very blandness it requires to function, as Facebook members discovered when the site changed their privacy settings, allowing more things to become more public, with the (unintended?) consequence that your Aunt Dora could suddenly find out you joined the group Queer Nation last Tuesday. Gay kids became un-gay, partiers took down their party photos, political firebrands put out their fires. In real life we can be all these people on our own terms, in our own way, with whom we choose. For a revealing moment Facebook forgot that. Or else got bored of waiting for us to change in the ways it’s betting we will. On the question of privacy, Zuckerberg informed the world: “That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” On this occasion, the world protested, loudly, and so Facebook has responded with “Groups,” a site revamp that will allow people to divide their friends into “cliques,” some who see more of our profile and some who see less.

"How “Groups” will work alongside “Facebook Connect” remains to be seen. Facebook Connect is the “next iteration of Facebook Platform,” in which users are “allowed” to “‘connect’ their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site.” In this new, open Internet, we will take our real identities with us as we travel through the Internet. This concept seems to have some immediate Stoical advantages: no more faceless bile, no more inflammatory trolling: if your name and social network track you around the virtual world beyond Facebook, you’ll have to restrain yourself and so will everyone else. On the other hand, you’ll also take your likes and dislikes with you, your tastes, your preferences, all connected to your name, through which people will try to sell you things.

"Maybe it will be like an intensified version of the Internet I already live in, where ads for dental services stalk me from pillar to post and I am continually urged to buy my own books. Or maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous."

Full Article

Also, a riddle from n+1:

§ American government is run by and for capital and capitalists.
§ Most Americans hate government.
§ Most Americans love capitalism and capitalists.

Therefore either a. Most Americans really love their government.
or b. Most Americans really hate capitalism.

§ Contemporary American politics exists in the absurd space defined by the impossibility of openly acknowledging either a or b.

Pour Some Four Loko Out (If It's Still Legal In Your State) For Alan Grayson

I know I already gave a sort of epithet for soon-to-be-out-of-office Rep. Grayson but I have to add this clip from tonight's installment of The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell (absent O'Donnell himself for some reason), in which Grayson drops an unthinkable expletive for an American politician: CLASS WARFARE!!!!!!! He drops the CW bomb while talking about the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich that the Republicans in Congress are obstinately for in spite of the fact that the only way that they can justify it is in terms of "trickle-down economics," which is, of course, a theory almost universally panned by economists, with decades of history and a collapsed world economy to discredit it empirically. The whole segment is pretty good (particularly the bit in which the other Congressman on for the segment cites the hypocrisy of an incoming Republican Congressman who ran on the repeal of healthcare who is petitioning to have HIS GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE kick in now, instead of when he is sworn in), but if you want to skip to the part I'm talking about it starts right after the 7:30 mark.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On a similar note...

Wisconsin man votes against Palin TV dance... with shotgun

(AFP) – 6 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A rural Wisconsin man this week joined a minority of viewers who opposed Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol's advance to the finals of a hit US dance show -- by shooting his TV with a shotgun.

Steven Cowan, a 57-year-old with a history of mental illness, was arrested Tuesday morning after a 15-hour standoff with police called to the scene by his wife, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

The couple had been sitting in their living room watching "Dancing with the Stars" Monday night when Palin appeared on stage.

"The (expletive) politics," Cowan yelled, before racing upstairs. His wife later told authorities that he didn't think Palin was much of a dancer, the daily said, citing the official complaint.

A beet-red Cowan came back down 20 minutes later, loaded a single-barrel shotgun and blew away the TV. He then demanded his wife retrieve two pistols that had been taken away from him for safety reasons.

Cowan had in the past taken medication for bipolar disorder and had been out drinking earlier that evening, the paper said, citing the complaint.

His wife, fearing he would turn the gun on her, fled and called the police, who arrived with hostage negotiators and a dog team, the daily said.

Cowan, who has no previous criminal record, was charged with "recklessly endangering safety" and the use of a weapon, according to court documents.

Bristol has advanced to the finals by winning over the public despite receiving poor marks on her dancing ability from the show's judges.

That has led to allegations by some viewers that the conservative Tea Party movement that glorifies her mother is behind her rise on the popular televised contest, where celebrities partner with professional dancers.

Bristol's success comes as her mother, the former governor of Alaska, solidifies her own life in the spotlight with a reality show launched at the weekend, fueling speculation about her 2012 White House plans.

The elder Palin burst onto the national stage in 2008 when Republican presidential nominee John McCain picked her to be his running mate.

Bristol Palin has a nearly two-year-old son with her on-off boyfriend Levi Johnston. Her unplanned pregnancy made her America's most famous teenage mother during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Poison For Your Eyes and Ears

Police said Siebenmorgen assaulted a man at a Milwaukie TriMet bus mall on Oct. 21 and minutes later was spotted jumping on the hood of a parked car with a driver inside.

Less than an hour later, police say Siebenmorgen began throwing rocks at a woman near Milwaukie Market Place on Oak Street. That woman suffered minor injuries.

Stewart on Maddow

Jon Stewart did a nearly 50 minute interview with Rachel Maddow tonight, which he claims he wanted to do to discuss some of the criticisms of the rally, with at least the implication being that he wanted to clear his name a bit and clarify what it was really about as opposed to how it was perceived. What really happened, in my opinion, was that he made himself look even more foolish than at the rally. I'll embed it below, but first list a very few thoughts on things that jumped out to me (so just go down to the video if you don't care).

- Stewart takes aim at some of the charges leveled by Bill Maher, both directly and indirectly. His response that really jumped out and was the most absurd was concerning the "claim" that George W. Bush is a war criminal. He accepts the charge as "technically" true, but then goes on a very misguided polemic about why it is somehow not worth asserting because it is a "conversation stopper." His logic here is that the moment that you assert this fact to someone on the right, they will stop taking you seriously, pigeon-hole you as an extremist, etc.. This is ridiculous on a number of levels, the most obvious being that just because a truth isn't popular doesn't mean it is any less deserving of attention. In fact, the better argument would be that it is more deserving of attention. Secondly, and even more absurdly, he goes on to compare Bush to a number of of other war criminals, particularly Saddam Hussein, and draws the conclusion that, well, sure, Bush may be a war criminal, but he isn't as bad as those other war criminals. As if that excuses his war crimes! This is absolutely heinous. War crimes are not judged against other war crimes, they are judged against the law. This comes back to exactly what Maher was talking about when he discussed Republicans staking out a position that is further and further to the right, and then demanding Democrats to meet them in the middle. Only now we're talking about acts that even the United States recognizes as "crimes against humanity." Finally, I would add that the illegal wars perpetrated by the Bush administration, now carried out by the Obama administration, made life a lot worse for a lot more people in the Middle East (and certainly in the US) than Saddam Hussein did, and in a remarkably shorter time period.

- You can see Maddow getting progressively more frustrated with Stewart throughout the interview, and Stewart remaining remarkably smug throughout. The claim that Maddow seemed most frustrated about, and rightfully so, is Stewart's claim that he has repeated ad nauseum over the last decade that he somehow isn't a member of the media, and that people don't take him all that seriously. Maddow on multiple occasions pressures him on what the difference is between their two shows, and as a response Stewart only concocts vague metaphors that entail him throwing things at people in the political arena (Restoring sanity indeed!).

- The one point Stewart makes well is that the discordancy should not be between Democrats and Republicans, but rather between, as he puts it, "corruption and non-corruption", or, to put it a bit more legibly, the have's and the have not's (though I don't think that that is how he would ever put it).

BROCIALISM

hey that bill maher quote down there is pretty spot on, reading his words and not having to see his face go smugasfuck after every sentence is a step in the right direction for him

Some Clever Title

I have very mixed feelings on Bill Maher, but most of them are good. The only times that they are bad is when he says things like he is "alarmed" at the large number of people named Mohammed in Western society, and then tries to cover up the racism inherent in his words by claiming to be "saying that as an atheist." But then again he does say a lot of good things which make his show worth watching every week, if you get HBO. Here is a sample I particularly liked from last weeks show, concerning the "Rally to Restore Sanity":

"Now, with all due respect to my friends Jon and Stephen, it seems to me that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you'd side with the sane and reasonable. And not try to pretend that the insanity is equally distributed in both parties.

"Keith Olbermann is right when he says he's not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts. The other one is very close to playing with his poop. And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance's sake; that the left is just as violent and cruel as the right; that unions are just as powerful as corporations; that reverse-racism is just as damaging as racism."

"When Jon announced his rally, he said that the national conversation is dominated by people on the right who believe Obama is a socialist and people on the left who believe 9/11 was an inside job. But, I can't name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11 was an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama is a socialist? All of them. McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Palin, all of them. It's now official Republican dogma. Like tax cuts pay for themselves, and gay men just haven't met the right woman.

"As another example of both sides using overheated rhetoric, Jon cited the right equating Obama with Hitler and the left calling Bush a war criminal. Except thinking Obama is like Hitler is utterly unfounded, but thinking Bush is a war criminal, that's the opinion of General Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into Abu Ghraib.

You see, Republicans keep staking out a position that is further and further to the right, and then demand Democrats meet them in the middle. Which is now not the middle anymore. That's the reason healthcare reform is so watered down. It's Bob Dole's plan from 1994. Same thing with cap and trade. It was the first President Bush's plan to deal with carbon emissions. Now, the Republican plan for climate change is to claim it's a hoax."

"Two opposing sides don't necessarily have two compelling arguments. Martin Luther King spoke on that mall in the capitol, and he didn't say, "Remember, folks, those Southern sheriff's with the fire hoses and the German Shepherds, they have a point, too!" No, he said, "I have a dream. They have a nightmare."

Also, for the illiterate, here's Glenn Greenwald explaining to Lawrence O'Donnell why moving to the right is not a blueprint for success for Democrats:

Some shit on another blog

My English counterpart Richard Seymour has posted some typically insightful, detailed, and scathing analysis of the U.S. midterm elections on his blog. A few snippets:

"This change in the political composition of the elected chambers as a result of the 2010 mid-terms will be even less significant than the 1994 congressional elections. The GOP's 'surge' will be predicated on, again, just about a fifth of eligible voters. Bear in mind that voter eligibility is, thanks to a racist criminal justice system and voting laws that deprive convicted felons of the right to vote, biased against poor and black voters anyway. But it will be depicted as a populist upsurge against what is perceived to be a tax-and-spend administration with socialist, Muslim, Kenyan anti-colonialist roots. In fact, the Tea Party 'movement' will probably not have had the effect that the commentariat is looking for. It is the result not of 'grassroots' right-wing anger, but of class-conscious business intervention in the political process - particularly by the billionaire Koch brothers. The 'grassroots' that are mobilised tend to be whiter and wealthier than the population at large, and they are heavily dependent on the media to talk up their activities.

"In reality, just as in Massachusetts in January, millions of Democratic voters will not have turned out. Obama and his supporters have relied on a strategy of condescendingly lecturing the base, telling them off for expecting too much, which is grotesque and pathetic. (He saved capitalism, you fools!) His staff, as well, have been known to insult the base, especially progressives, as idiots and morons for being furious over the healthcare sell-out. So, why would grassroots Dems mobilise for an elitist pro-Wall Street clique that treats them like dirt and tells them they should be grateful?"

"If we understand electoral politics as a particular expression of the class struggle in the US, the bizarre trends noted above can be comprehended better. First of all, the obvious. Unlike in much of the world, the United States does not have a party of labour, that is a party created by and rooted in the organised working class. The electoral system is entirely dominated by two pro-business parties. The Democrats have, since the 'New Deal', tended to gain from whatever votes are cast by the working class, and have ruthlessly and jealously guarded that advantage against all potential 'third party' rivals."

"Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward argued, in Why Americans Still Don't Vote, that the exclusion of the working class from elections is actively desired by politicians. They suggest that if politicians were interested in crafting a policy mix that would appeal to the poor, the poor would respond, and they would be able to command electoral majorities. Pippa Norris of Harvard University concurs: the evidence suggests that turnout among the working class will increase at elections if there are left and trade union based parties that are capable of mobilising them. But it is again worth stressing that the exclusion of the poor from the electoral system is not wholly voluntary. Thomas E Patterson, in The Vanishing Voter (2009), points out that the electoral system in the US has had a long tradition of seeking to exclude the uneducated and the poor, and Patterson argues that voter registration rules still work to limit the size and composition of the electorate. He notes that the US has a disproportionately high number of non-citizens among its total population (7%), and ineligible adults (10%). Thus, 17% of the total adult population at any given time is legally excluded from voting. The exclusion of so many voters is the result of deliberate projects: in one case to manage labour migration flows to benefit capital (non-citizens cause less trouble than those permitted to naturalise); and in the other case to construct a carceral state that imprisoned more poor and black Americans than ever before. On any given day, 1 in every 32 American adults is directly in the control of the criminal justice system, either through jail, parole, probation or community supervision. This only hints at the wider effects that this behemoth has on American society, but suffice to say that it deprives millions of the right to vote where it would easily make a significant difference to the outcome."

The remainder here.

These Fucking Guys

Newly empowered Republican Senators are starting to talk about a bunch of nonsense, as expected, to the point that even Fox News is starting to push them on their bullshit. Here's a video of Eric Cantor talking to Chris Wallace about extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which of course have been completely unfunded and account for a large portion of the deficit Republicans hate so much....but, wait....

Whoops! We had it all wrong, guys! Government doesn't need new sources of revenue! These fucking guys. This just illustrates what the Republican party really stands for: not fiscal responsibility, small government, or state's rights, but rather the "right" of the super-rich to not pay taxes. In Cantor's own words:

"No, I am not for decoupling the rates, because all that says to people looking to go back in and put capital to work and invest to create jobs is you're going to get taxed on any return you can expect."

Um, duh? Of course you are going to get taxed! What this statement really amounts to, other than a rejection of basic economics, is a statement that says "if you have enough money to start your own company and/or extra money lying around to invest, you shouldn't have to pay taxes."

Also, in case you were confused, "decoupling" is part of a compromise Obama is working on to separate middle-class tax cuts from the obscene tax cuts for the richest 2%, making the middle class tax cuts permanent and giving the tax cuts for the rich a temporary extension. Of course Republicans are against this, because without the middle class tax cuts lumped in with the tax cuts for the super rich, their position on not taxing millionaires and billionaires becomes a lot more indefensible.

Here's another example of the disparity between their rhetoric and reality:

On a final note, isn't it depressing that these crazies have now gone from the people Obama more or less just panders to when he really doesn't even need to to the people that we now all have to be legitimately worried will fuck everything up again?

gold

21st Century Maxim

"I've said this over and over again: you cannot, in today's world, judge a book by its contents."

PRE ORDER SNUFFALUFFAGUS' REALM OF THE FORMS

could be worse?

could be BETTER!



could be a crackhead

Some Things

From the NY Times:

"Fresh off their sweeping victories in the midterm elections, Congressional Republican leaders on Wednesday said that they would use their new majority in the House and bolstered ranks in the Senate to pursue a vision of smaller government and lower spending, as well as the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of the year.

"At a news conference at the Capitol, the likely House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner, and the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, invitedPresident Obama to work with them on these and other goals. But they also quickly adopted an aggressive posture on some issues certain to antagonize Democrats, including a vow to repeal the big new health care law."

So these are some things you can now expect to become real issues. It will be interesting at least to see how Republicans try to sell the Bush tax cuts as good for the deficit, which seems to be the main thing they have conditioned their supporters to care about. It'll probably go something like "Trickle down economics blah blah entrepreneurs blah blah what makes this country great blah." Probably. Although, remember that President Obama still has that nice big veto pen, which hopefully he will make copious use of, and the Democrats still control the Senate. However, you do hear an alarming amount of rhetoric coming from people like Michele Bachmann, who is expected to challenge for the newly vacated Speaker of the House position, about investigating Obama for "un-American activities," with the goal of an eventual impeachment. Ludicrous? Absolutely. More ludicrous than impeaching a President for getting an extra-marital blow job? Nah, brah. Also, comments from Evan Bayh, also in today's NYT, which illustrates how all Democrats, are missing the point of yesterday's election results:

"And we were too deferential to our most zealous supporters. During election season, Congress sought to placate those on the extreme left and motivate the base — but that meant that our final efforts before the election focused on trying to allow gays in the military, change our immigration system and repeal the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. These are legitimate issues but unlikely to resonate with moderate swing voters in a season of economic discontent."

The truth is exactly the opposite of this. Remember all that talk of an "enthusiasm gap"? It's not conservative, or, as Bayh would have it, "moderate" Democrats who were unenthused. It's precisely these "zealous" supporters who were so disappointed with the lack of progressive action by people who call themselves progressives that have been turning against the Democrats. This is obvious when you simply look at the stats of which Democrats lost their seats. Half of the Democrats who bids for re-election failed were among the "Blue Dog" conservative Democrats, while many more liberal Democrats who were expected to be beaten, such as barney Frank, retained their seats. It seems pretty clear that the message delivered here is that the Democratic base wants less pandering to moderates and conservatives and more of what the party purports to stand for. If you were watching MSNBC last night you noticed this misreading of signals all over the place. Also, just to be clear, Democrats aren't trying to repeal the Bush tax cuts. They are about to expire. There is no need for repeal. They are done. What they want is for them not to be renewed, and for the roughly $700 billion dollars of revenue that regularly taxing the rich would generate to go back to the government.

Finally, pour some 40 out for our fallen homie, King of Comedy on the floor, Alan Grayson, who was defeated yesterday. We will miss treats like these:

Your BFFF Tonight

VOTE

Bertolt Brecht remarked in his crucial text "Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties" that "it will not do to grant that goodness must be weak as rain must be wet. It takes courage to say that the good were defeated not because they were good, but because they were weak." In that spirit, Paul Jay has brought some devastating analysis to bear on what will most likely be a failure of the Democratic Party in tomorrow's election, enumerating six ways in which the Democrats have aided in the resurgence of the Republican Party and disappointed the majority of their base. Lest the alternative courses of action implicit in his criticisms seem utopian, we ought to remember that we live in a democracy, and that as such it is our province as citizens to demand things of our government, which is nominally representative, and it is the province of this government to enact our demands. The objection that is always raised that there are procedural obstacles to realizing these demands should be flatly rejected. If the Bush administration could find any number of legal loopholes to enact completely heinous policies that a majority of Americans did not support (even such Americans as John Ashcroft, Lindsey Graham and Richard Armitage), then certainly the present administration could find some way to enact policies that reflect the demands of most American citizens (e.g., a public option in health care*). If they do not do this, we can only assume that they have no interest in doing it, and the fact that Liz Fowler, "a former executive for a private health insurer," was a chief contributor to the health care bill is but one bit of evidence that could be adduced to support this claim. (As Bill Moyers notes in the linked video, "Movers and shakers rotate between government and the lucrative private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget who they're working for," going on to point out that there are six private health insurance lobbyists for every member of congress, and that more than five hundred of these are former congressional staff members.) So if Barack Obama in his Daily Show interview makes Jon Stewart look at all foolish, he himself comes off as glib and patronizing when he says, “If [your] point is that overnight, we did not transform the health care system, that point is true.”

In that connection Jay, at the end of his remarks about the Democrats, makes an implicit riposte to Stewart's plea for "sanity" in popular political discourse (and to the recent, rather embarrassing rally organized around this theme), as well as the sort of appeals made at the earlier "One Nation" rally:

But perhaps it’s way past time we realize that we are not one nation, there really are two Americas. That the lack of civil discourse and extremes of competing ideology is not the underlying problem but a symptom of an objective difference of interest. That what’s rational for most billionaires may not be so sane for the rest of us.Yes, we would like everyone to be in the same rowboat, all working hard to “get things done”, to solve the grave problems facing us. But the problem is some are sailing around in yachts, and the harder the rest of us row, the bigger those yachts get. The real division in America is not between the Democratic and Republican parties, its between the people who day after day, are out their pushing those oars and those that are just taking a cruise.

Jay here identifies the critical blind-spot of the calls for a coming together of people whose "values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done": namely the assumption that these "values and principles" somehow play no role in determining notions of the "things" that need to "get done." The very vagueness of this prescription - "working together to get things done"- is an index of its emptiness. The idea of the "non-ideological moderate" is basically a false one. Ideology is at work precisely in decisions about which goals are worth pursuing, and what means can be acceptably applied in pursuing them. For someone who truly believes in improving the lot of those whom some in the media label "ordinary and working people," the Libertarian-Tea Party-Republican program of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans while eliminating all or most forms of social spending is unacceptable, and there can really be no common cause with anyone who advocates such a program.** The lines in some cases are perhaps not so clearly drawn, like with those Tea Partiers who recognize the stagnation of wages over the last 40 years as a problem, but put the blame on illegal immigrants rather than corporate CEOs and Nixon-Reagan. But on the whole Jay is right to affirm the existence of "an objective difference of interest" among different classes of Americans, and a corresponding ideological difference that can't really be papered over with liberal platitudes about working together.

*It should be mentioned here that one Washington Post/ABC-conducted poll found that 80 percent of Americans "believed that universal health care was 'more important than holding down taxes.'"

**This position is less and less restricted to Republicans and their ilk, and has been since the Reagan administration. New York Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo, for example, has made it his goal to wage a "permanent 
political campaign to counter the well-financed labor unions he believes have bullied previous governors and lawmakers into making bad decisions. He will seek to transform the state's weak business lobby into a more formidable ally, believing that corporate leaders in New York have virtually surrendered the field to big labor." It seems like a crass joke that a member of the Democratic Party, the supposed opponent of the neoliberal austerity that is the ongoing program of the Republican Party, should run on such a platform, which is more or less identical to the platform Meg Whitman is running on in California.

It's Not TV, It's HBO, and on HBO Zach Galifianakis Smokes Weed on Real Time With Bill Maher

Oh, and then he offered the joint to some Fox News lady. Proof:




One more reason to love him.