To the Gallows

New Taibbi:

The Democratic Party has been operating for two decades without the active participation of its voters. ***

It's been an essentially oligarchic system of government, where all the important decision-makers have been institutions, with any attempts by ordinary people to circumvent the system coldly repressed. Remember 2000, when Ralph Nader was not only not allowed to debate with Al Gore and George Bush, but wasn't allowed in the building -- not even allowed in a second, adjoining hall in the building, not even when he had a ticket? Well, we have a replay of that proud moment in our history going on now, with Hillary's Senate primary opponent [Jonathan] Tasini being shut out of debates by New York's NY1 TV channel (owned by TimeWarner) which is insisting that qualified candidates not only reach 5 percent support in the polls (Tasini is at 13 percent and rising) but raise or spend $500,000. Said NY1 Vice President Steve Paulus: "All Tasini would need is for each [New York state registered voter] to send him a dollar. Right now, with the money he's raised, he does not represent the party he claims to represent."

So a war chest is now the standard for representation? In order to get on television, you need a dollar from every voter? (Are we electing a Senator or holding a Girl Scout raffle? What the fuck?) And this is decided by . . . an executive for a corporate television station? One that recently sent a reporter [Adam Balkin] to Japan to do features on high-tech toilets? In other words, NY1 will pay to put an exotic Japanese toilet on a few million or so New York television screens -- but insists on seeing a half-million dollar deposit before it will put a Democratic candidate with 13 percent support in a televised debate? Am I missing something?

more here on Jonathan Tasini

more here and here on the Clinton-Tasini non-debate

Taibbi's "Low Post"

After what seems like an eternity, Matt Taibbi has returned with a weekly web-only column, with pieces on Lamont-Lieberman, David Brooks, the DLC & Yuppie Paranoia, and Hillary Clinton:

Beltway pros like Hillary have long understood that in tough times, the vast majority of disgruntled Americans would rather find a way to convince themselves that their party agrees with them than face the fact that they never had any choice at all on a wide range of crucial issues. They're willing to be swayed by a carefully scripted display of canned anger like Hillary's outburst in the Senate [against Donald Rumsfeld] because the alternatives -- third-party politics, grass-roots activism, dropping out of society altogether -- are too exhausting and radical to even imagine. Because getting to the root causes of things is so hard and scary, they'll settle for punishing an unpopular politician, even if it means electing his accomplice.

So they'll vote, even for a factory-produced fraud like Hillary Clinton, because voting is easy. Much easier than doing something.

That Liberal Media II

Remember the NSA wiretapping story published by the New York Times in December 2005? The NYT actually had the story before the 2004 election:

It has now been confirmed by the New York Times Executive Editor, Bill Keller himself, that they had the story for weeks before the 2004 election and even had a draft for possible publication a week before election day.

Read the NYT Public Editor's piece here.

That Liberal Media

Sickening:

"Is Ned Lamont the Al Qaeda candidate?"

This was the question that CNN's Nice Haircut Chuck Roberts posed this afternoon to Hotline's John Mercurio.

Watch it here.

UPDATE: Mr. Nice Hair apologizes.

Feeding the Pain

Israel continues its war crimes in Lebanon, while the U.S. gives its approval and support.
Bush justifies Israel's acts as "part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East."
Let's give Bush the benefit of the doubt and say he's referring to Hezbollah rather than all the Lebanese people as the "force of terror." What exactly has Hezbollah [or Hizbullah] actually done to Israel to invite this full-scale attack on Lebanon?

Per Stephen Zunes:

Unlike the major Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah forces haven't killed any Israeli civilians for more than a decade. Indeed, a 2002 Congressional Research Service report noted, in its analysis of Hezbollah, that “no major terrorist attacks have been attributed to it since 1994.” The most recent State Department report on international terrorism also fails to note any acts of terrorism by Hezbollah since that time except for unsubstantiated claims that a Hezbollah member was a participant in a June 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force dormitory at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

While Hezbollah's ongoing rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel are indeed illegitimate and can certainly be considered acts of terrorism, it is important to note that such attacks were launched only after the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on civilian targets in Israel began July 12.

Juan Cole continues to provide useful insights:

The wholesale destruction of all of Lebanon by Israel and the US Pentagon does not make any sense. Why bomb roads, roads, bridges, ports, fuel depots in Sunni and Christian areas that have nothing to do with Shiite Hizbullah in the deep south? And, why was Hizbullah's rocket capability so crucial that it provoked Israel to this orgy of destruction? Most of the rockets were small katyushas with limited range and were highly inaccurate. They were an annoyance in the Occupied Golan Heights, especially the Lebanese-owned Shebaa Farms area. Hizbullah had killed 6 Israeli civilians since 2000. For this you would destroy a whole country?

So once again we see some vague linking of "terrorism" with "Muslim"/"Arab"/"Middle Eastern" peoples, resulting in the indiscriminate collective punishment of entire civilian populations and infrastructure for the alleged crimes of a few militants (who do not in fact hide among civilians). This strategy will surely diminish any anti-U.S. and anti-Israel sentiment in the region and deter people from acting on it, right?

"There's going to be another 9/11, and then we're going to hear all the usual claptrap about how it's good versus evil, and they hate us because we're good and democratic, and they hate our values and all the other material that comes out of the rear end of a bull."
-- Robert Fisk, quoted here

If only "those people" would appreciate the righteous intentions (never about oil) of those who invade their lands, support their tyrants, destroy their economies, and displace and kill them. What an unappreciative lot.

"It is no secret that in past years, Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hizbullah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihad terror. The reasons are understood. There are constant warnings about it by Western intelligence agencies, and by the leading specialists on these topics. One can bury one’s head in the sand and take comfort in a "wall-to-wall consensus" that what we do is "just and moral", ignoring the lessons of recent history, or simple rationality. Or one can face the facts, and approach dilemmas which are very serious by peaceful means. They are available. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even "apocalypse soon."
-- Noam Chomsky

Thankfully, as of this writing, Mazen Kerbaj is alive in Beirut, creating art and music which is truly as serious as your life.

PS - Despite being subject to the distortions of our pro-Israeli media, (actually anti-Israeli, since these crimes will boost anti-Israel sentiment and violence) a significant portion of the U.S. population sees through the lies: according to the latest poll, 44% believe Israel's response is either unjustified or justfied-but-excessive, while 43% believe it is justified and not excessive. However, in yet another example of our democracy gap, blind support of Israel's actions is endemic to the U.S. ruling class:

On July 18, the Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution "condemning Hamas and Hezbollah and their state sponsors and supporting Israel's exercise of its right to self-defense." After House majority leader John Boehner removed language from the bill urging "all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure," the House version passed by a landslide, 410 to 8.

And the "progressive blogosphere" (e.g., Kos) has been conspicuously silent, sweeping the issue of U.S. complicity under the rug.
The Israel Lobby has certainly been effective in instilling the values of self-censorship in public discourse, using the reprehensible tactic of equating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. Is this the legacy of the Holocaust?

Hot Jazz

Time: 1:00am
Temperature: 85°F
Heat index: 93°F

• "Hotter Than 'Ell" (Fletcher Henderson, Tidal Wave compilation, 1934)
  
• "Too Hot For Words" (Billie Holiday, Lady Day: Complete Columbia Recordings, 1935)
• "Too Darn Hot" (Ella Fitzgerald, Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, 1956)

what we need:

• "Drifting on a Reed, aka Air Conditioning" (Charlie Parker, Complete Dial Sesssions, 1947)
• "Ice Cream Konitz" (Lee Konitz, Subconscious-Lee, 1950)
• "Let's Cool One" (Thelonious Monk, Genius of Modern Music, v.2, 1952)

Time for some reggae and a cold beverage.