The Distant Ocean

Mark Halperin's mistakes

Mark Halperin made two serious mistakes when he said that Obama was "kind of a dick yesterday":

1. "Kind of a"?  No, just "a".
2. Every day.

I fully support MSNBC's decision to suspend Halperin over these misleading and wholly unnecessary qualifiers.

Dead Americans could really help Obama with the Jewish vote!

As I mentioned a few days ago, former CIA analyst and presidential briefer Ray McGovern reported that his administration sources have told him that "White House officials" were "perfectly willing to have the cold corpses of [Gaza flotilla] activists shown on American TV."  On hearing this same report, former UK ambassador Craig Murray decided to look into it himself:

...I set my own diplomatic sources to work in Washington, without giving them any indication of Ray’s information. They came back with an independent report from a different source – close to Clinton rather than the White House – with exactly the same result of which Ray was warned. I was told that Obama will welcome an Israeli attack on the US ship, as giving him a chance to confirm his pro-Israeli credentials and improve his standing with AIPAC ahead of the Presidential election race. Fatalities would be "not a problem".

There was no information that the Obama regime has quietly given Netanyahu a green light to attack the ship. But I strongly expect they will; by deniable means, of course.

So there you have it: not only would Barack Obama be more than happy to let Israel kill a few US citizens, he's actually thinking it could "improve his standing with AIPAC" and help shore up his vulnerability with Jewish voters.  Illustrating once again that no level of skepticism or cynicism is sufficient when it comes to this bloated bag of amoral ambition and self-regard.

Regarding that last bit of speculation about a green light for Israel, by the way, Murray may have missed this quote from Hillary Clinton:

There will be construction materials entering Gaza and we think that it’s not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves.

Got that?  This is Obama's Secretary of State announcing, before anything has actually happened, that if Israel kills flotilla activists it will have done so in self-defense—preemptively rationalizing a foreign country's killing of American citizens.  Short of a leaked memo saying "To: Israel, Re: Flotilla, Kill as many as you want. Love and kisses, Hillary", the lights don't get much greener than that.

The lesser of two evils, ladies and gentlemen.

ADDING: Jonathan Schwarz points out that since around 25% of the passengers on the U.S. boat will be Jewish, the title could also be "Dead Americans Jews could really help Obama with the Jewish vote!"  And given that one of those Jews is Hedy Epstein I suppose it could also be "Dead Holocaust survivors could really help Obama with the Jewish vote!"—though at that point I fear we may be exceeding internationally recognized irony safety limits.

Israel is at war with the people of Gaza

My site has recently enjoyed a visit from Wilbur the Hasbara Donkey, whose personal mission appears to be to seek out Internet mentions of the siege of Gaza and then spam-troll the comments sections with talking points straight from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  In the course of the discussion I discovered that Wilbur (going by his hilariously unlikely pseudonym "Bob") has declared elsewhere that "The people of Gaza are at war with Israel".  Yes, I suppose—in the same sense that the people of the Warsaw Ghetto were "at war" with Germany, that is.

But I have to say I appreciate his candor.  I think it's helpful to know that the position of creatures like Wilbur is that the people of Gaza are at war with Israel, and that the people of Gaza—from infants to grandmothers, apparently—are therefore all valid targets for Israel's collective punishment.  This puts them right in line with official Israeli policy, as outlined in Dov Weissglas's description of the purpose of the siege of Gaza:

"It's like a meeting with a dietician. We have to make them much thinner, but not enough to die," said the prime minister's adviser Dov Weissglas.

Israel is sensitive to the PR needs of our modern world, you see, and the Israelis realize that they can't just "kill and kill and kill" the "animals" in Gaza "all day, every day," no matter how much they might like to.  No, it's necessary to carefully meter their collective punishment.  That goes both for their diet and their economy generally, as described in this U.S. embassy cable (thank you, Bradley Manning):

As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge (see reftel &D8).

(Wait, did we say "Gazan economy"?  On multiple occasions?  We actually meant "Gazan pipeline for heavy weapons from Iran"!  Could you please update all your archived embassy cables with the preferred hasbara phrase?)

In fact, the Israeli NGO Gisha managed to obtain the Israeli government document describing how to "keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse" and "make [the Palestinians] much thinner, but not enough to die"—including the explicit acknowledgment that even these minimal guidelines for punishment could be ignored in the case of "a policy of deliberate restriction."  I'm sure the Germans maintained similar documents regarding their procedures for the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto.  As an Israeli officer in the Occupied Territories once infamously said (or reasonably said, in Wilbur's fetid little value system):

In order to prepare properly for the next campaign, one of the Israeli officers in the territories said not long ago, it's justified and in fact essential to learn from every possible source. If the mission will be to seize a densely populated refugee camp, or take over the casbah in Nablus, and if the commander's obligation is to try to execute the mission without casualties on either side, then he must first analyze and internalize the lessons of earlier battles - even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto.

Yes, it's clear that the Israelis—and their faithful servants like Wilbur—have been "analyzing and internalizing", not to mention actively applying, the valuable "lessons" of the Warsaw Ghetto.  And what could possibly be wrong with that?  After all, the people of Gaza are at war with Israel.

I have some personal experience with this.  I was in the West Bank in 2002, just a week after the Israelis pulled out of the Jenin refugee camp, and I saw exactly how the Israelis "internalized the lessons" taught by the Germans: as they swept through the camp, they had spray-painted the Star of David on the walls of many of the houses on one street, and elsewhere throughout the camp.  In the mosque in the center of Jenin—which the Israelis had taken over and used as a sniper tower—we found an empty can of spray paint they'd left behind, and a Star of David drawn on the chalkboard of the kindergarten in the basement.  There was smashed glass everywhere I went, in Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Rafah and Hebron.  As I listened to it crunching beneath my shoes and surveyed the destroyed homes, shops, and offices, and the cars crushed like tin cans by Israeli Merkavas and bulldozers, I couldn't help but think of it as a Palestinian Kristallnacht.

But that's of no concern, because the people of Gaza are at war with Israel.  Or to translate it from hasbara back into reality: Israel is at war with the people of Gaza.

The real enemy

Here's Ray McGovern writing about his upcoming voyage to Gaza:

I also have been cautioned by a source with access to very senior staffers at the National Security Council that not only does the White House plan to do absolutely nothing to protect our boat from Israeli attack or illegal boarding, but that White House officials "would be happy if something happened to us." They are, I am reliably told, "perfectly willing to have the cold corpses of activists shown on American TV."

See, it's not enough that if you're an actual liberal in this country, Obama and his coterie deride and dismiss you as one of the sanctimonious, purist fucking retards of the professional left.  No, if you take it a step further—if your sense of responsibility compels you to put your life in jeopardy to oppose what this country is doing around the world—they're just as happy to see you dead.  When I was in the West Bank and Gaza in 2002, I knew that if I was killed my government's only response would be to do everything it could to shield the killers from being investigated, much less held responsible.  It certainly made it crystal clear who my real enemies are.

I have no doubt the sentiment McGovern describes proceeds from "very senior staffers at the National Security Council" right up to Mr. Hopenchange himself.  When it comes to killing, Obama goes at it with dispassionate enthusiasm and business-like efficiency; it's as though we did finally end up with Michael Corleone in the White House.  If I regret anything when it comes to this creature, it's that I ever entertained the notion, even briefly, that he retained enough of a conscience that the killing he'd be doing once he became president might actually trouble him somewhat.

OR NOT SO CRYSTAL CLEAR: I wrote last year about how misguided it is to name a ship to Gaza "The Audacity of Hope"—as though German dissidents in 1940 had called their Poland-bound protest bus the "Mein Kampf"—and everything I said then still applies.  I love the folks on this boat, and I'd love just as much to believe that using this name was intended both as a crafty publicity move and an attempt to shame Obama with the words he so hollowly deployed for his own profit and self-aggrandizement, but there's no evidence that that's the case.  Here's McGovern again (in an interview published two days after the article of his I quoted above):

"The name of the boat - Audacity of Hope - is inspired. No one can survive without hope. It was a way of saying to President Obama: 'You inspired us three years ago, and in this spirit we are trying to personify hopes that have been largely dashed.'"

I support the sentiment entirely: McGovern and all the other people on this boat are personifying hope, and risking everything to do it, and they've earned a huge measure of respect for that.  But when good people like them act as though there's even a remote possibility that the calculating shitbag in the White House cares about what they're saying, it just shows that they're still clinging to the illusions he so artfully deployed to co-opt them in the first place—and worse, it reinforces those illusions for other people.

I scry

Writing about the amusingly irrelevant Netroots Nation conference, Ken Thomas of AP poses this stumper:

What's a frustrated liberal to do? Democrats on the ideological left are grousing that President Barack Obama is just not that into them, and they're soul searching at a big weekend meeting about the strained political relationship as he seeks re-election.

Might they stay home when he asks them to vote for him again?

It just so happens that I've devised a foolproof method to look into the future and divine the answer to this question.  Take a blank sheet of paper and write the word "NO" on both sides, as big as you can.  Fold it into a paper airplane and throw it out the window.  Go outside and pick it up, then close your eyes and unfold it.  With your eyes still closed, turn the paper over exactly five times—I can't emphasize this enough.  Now open your eyes and look at the side of the sheet facing you, and whatever word you see there is the correct answer!

Highly unlikely to change*

Compare this:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

To this:

I am the latest in a string of U.S. defense secretaries who have urged allies privately and publicly, often with exasperation, to meet agreed-upon NATO benchmarks for defense spending.  However, fiscal, political and demographic realities make this unlikely to happen anytime soon, as even military stalwarts like the U.K have been forced to ratchet back with major cuts to force structure.  Today, just five of 28 allies – the U.S., U.K., France, Greece, along with Albania – exceed the agreed 2% of GDP spending on defense.

Regrettably, but realistically, this situation is highly unlikely to change.

It's as though in 58 years we've gone from T.S. Eliot to Ewan McTeagle.  And as I've said before, to get a true appreciation for just how far we've come, try to imagine a president of either party saying anything remotely resembling that first quote today.

---

* (For the better, that is; I no longer make the mistake of underestimating our potential in the opposite direction.)

It was just resting

Turns out that satire is not dead:

In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the Imperial Palace, Lord Vader declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that agents of the Imperial Army and stormtroopers of the 501st Legion had finally cornered Kenobi, one of the leaders of the Jedi rebellion, who had eluded the Empire for nearly two decades. Imperial officials said Kenobi resisted and was cut down by Lord Vader's own lightsaber. He was later dumped out of an airlock.

You should definitely click through to get the full effect.  And you'll want to read the comments as well, lest you miss jewels like this:

This website is pure lies and Empire propaganda. The only sites I trust for information are HothToday and WookieLeaks.

Or this:

It makes me LAUGH all these Lefties, they are like "he should of been taken to a court not killed without a trial" oh please, can you imagine Kenobi in a court? He would of Jedi mind tricked them all, there would be NO JUSTICE. DO not foget he is respoinsible for killing MANY of our STORMTROOPS!!!____Maybe if you complain that we are WINNING the war on galacatic terrorism you might want to think twice who you'reREAL FRIENDS friends are!!!____THANK YOU LORD VADER!!!

Taken as a whole, this is actually some of the most astute political satire I've seen in a long time.  Thanks to Mr. Consequence for the link.

AND: Speaking of Star Wars (not a phrase I get to use that often around here), you're all fine and intelligent people, so I'm sure you know The Phantom Menace sucked.  But if you've never heard someone spend over an hour explaining exactly why it sucked, you owe it to yourself to watch this review, which is so funny that you may not even notice the first time through what a perceptive bit of film criticism it is.  Trust me, your life will be richer for the experience.

Weiners never quit

I've always harbored a secret desire to call up Michael Weiner's (aka Savage's) talk show and offer up a sufficiently retrograde question to get past the screeners—like, say, "What can we do to stop these gays from recruiting our children?"  Then once I was talking to the man himself I'd start off with my question, but quickly interrupt it with, "Oh hey, I've always wondered: is your last name pronounced WIENER, or WHINER?"

(You thought this was going to be about Anthony Weiner?  What could possibly be newsworthy about him?  I mean, sure, the guy's engaged in some despicably shameful behavior, but it's not much worse than what every other Democrat in Congress does.)

ADDING: There are many things I expect from Amy Goodman, but I can honestly say that a dick joke wasn't one of them.  In fairness, it's tough to talk about this ludicrous foofaraw without making one (even unintentionally)—but still, she had to work pretty damn hard (see?) to make "Longfellow" even remotely relevant.

But if you really make them think...

I was talking with a friend about how conservatives get their marching orders from their news outlet of choice, to the point that they convince themselves they're genuinely outraged over Hugo Chavez or death panels or the war on Christmas or whatever other asinine talking point they've been programmed to spout this week, and I suggested that this would be an appropriate motto:

• Fox News: It's easier than thinking

But since I'm an equal opportunity cynic (in the Shaw sense), I added that there was another thought-related slogan that applies just as well to liberals' preferred news sources as that one does to Fox:

• PBS: If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you

While that probably needs no explanation, I've got nothing better to do, so: whereas conservatives are typically content to listen to the people they like bash the people they hate, liberals generally enjoy having their positions subjected to scrutiny and debate, in no small part because it makes them feel that their own beliefs are more than just received wisdom.  But they fail to distinguish between genuine debate and the illusion of debate—and while PBS (and NPR, and the New York Times, and other favored liberal news outlets) offer a neverending supply of the latter, you may as well wait for your dog to sprout wings as look there for the former.  If you're satisfied with tactical disagreements that never stray outside the ribbon-thin confines of mainstream policy or question fundamental assumptions, though—validating your worldview even while they appear to be challenging it—man, have they got you covered.

(Thanks to Don Marquis for the quote, and much more.)

Movies, movies, movies

I'm not the biggest Takashi Miike fan; Dead or Alive was worth it for the ridiculously over-the-top, well, everything, but Gozu more than balanced that scale in the other direction.  But I have to say his 13 Assassins was one of the best samurai movies I've seen; great plot, characters, dialogue and action, and good direction.  If you have any interest at all in Japanese guys running around with katanas you should give it a try.

And while we're on the subject of movies, here are some of the best ones I've picked up from the liberry* in the past year or so:

• Off the Map
• The Unknown Woman
• Untitled (best joke: "Wall surrounding space")
  
• The Black Balloon
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (no, really, it was surprisingly good)
• Sunshine Cleaning
• Good Dick (a film I thought I'd be turning off after 10 minutes, but which I ended up watching twice)
• Tully

I'd watch any of these films again—high praise in my world.  But the last two in particular stuck with me, and Tully is the kind of movie I thought just wasn't being made anymore, and was happy to find out I was wrong.

If you've got any recommendations of your own, please do share.

* (The cheap bastard's better-than-Netflix movie source, at least in my town, since they have a surprisingly good selection and you can have up to 10 movies checked out at a time for up to two weeks.)

ADDING: Two more in the wildly-exceeded-my-low-expectations category:

• Patrik, Age 1.5
• Please Give

What have you achieved for Obama?

So I was watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, which spends a lot of time on Shepard Fairey's efforts to plaster his OBEY image far and wide, and I thought, wait, don't I know this guy?  And moments later the film reminded me that this was the same schmuck who would later create the Obama HOPE poster, because, and I quote:

I have made art opposing the Iraq war for several years, and making art of Obama, who opposed the war from the start, is like making art for peace. I know I have an audience of young art fans and I’m delighted if I can encourage them to see the merits of Barack Obama.

Curious to see how delighted Mr. Art-For-Peace has been feeling after watching President Merit kick the war machine into hyperdrive, I happened across this essay of his from last September:

I support President Obama. I believe he is an intelligent, compassionate person, with many good policy ideas. If Obama runs for reelection in 2012, I will support him.

And while I wish he was more bold in action on issues of most concern to me -- health care, global warming, the war in Afghanistan, Wall Street reform, education, immigration reform -- I realize he is trying to do the best that he can given the obstructionist, "just say no to anything," opposition he faces from the Republicans in Congress.

Yes, it's a crying shame how the Republicans in Congress have forced Obama to massively increase drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, cut backroom deals with pharmaceutical and health care corporations, blackmail countries into accepting his administration's attempts to defer any meaningful response to global warming, wage war in open defiance of not just the Constitution but the War Powers Resolution, persecute whistleblowers with a ferocity that makes Nixon look like a bong-smoking hippie, etc etc etc.  Curse you, John Boehner!

You can read the rest if you want, but I warn you that "he is an intelligent, compassionate person, with many good policy ideas" is as deep a political insight as you're going to find.  But I did want to highlight this sobering challenge from another Obama defender (writing in response to some grousing malcontents in the comments):

Whatever happened to "Think what you can do for your country?" Instead of whining about what Obama has not achieved, look in the mirror. What have you achieved for Obama?

Man, that stings.  What have I achieved for Obama?  I haven't backed a Latin American coup, raised a single dime from Wall Street, expanded executive privilege so much as a centimeter, forced any Haitians back to their earthquake- and cholera-stricken hell on earth, shot an unarmed man in the face, lobbied for corporate tax cuts, or blown up even one measly Afghan wedding party.  And then I have the audacity to complain when he does it all himself!

So before we presume to criticize Obama any further, let's take a good long look in the mirror and think about what we can do for him.  Couldn't we ship a handgun or two to the Israeli army, just so he'll know he's not in this alone?  Yes we can!