December 2009: The Not-So-Great Depression

failblog.org

As Clever Sister has long said, we've had an economic depression for years—only it's been masked by credit card spending, something not available to the masses during the 1930s.

The old image of investors jumping out windows—it does seem somewhat fitting, at least compared to how many people of the non-investor class will probably be victims of a new upswing in murder-suicides, domestic violence, and workplace shootings.

Though according to this, the idea that the rich reacted to the Depression by suicide is mainly mythical, planted in the public mind—and histories—because of a few highly publicized incidents.

Having a government that responded to that particular depression was in the end a reality. And it tends to make me long for the good old, bad days—before the possibility of real discussion was suppressed, so that nothing important can ever be put "on the table" in our own time.

Thom Hartmann often plays clips of F. D. Roosevelt's 1936 speeches at the Democratic Convention in June, and at Madison Square Garden, just before Election Day.

From the convention speech transcript–

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business...They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

...

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

And from the October speech—

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

No wonder he was hated by the wealthy. And no wonder they have worked relentlessly ever since, to become as safe in their ownership of government as they are today.

By now, they've also suceeding in making workers pretty much invisible.

Or at least until Republicans need to fake some populism—like thrusting "Joe" the "Plumber" into the media...

After "Joe" is set up in his latest incarnation—as "war correspondent"—Hartmann makes a point of inteviewing "Joe" about the real "areas of his expertise." [Not-to-be-missed audio here.]

And there's the other current fake populism: corporate lobbyist-financed teabagger rallies, where Medicare recipients demand that the gubmint lay off their health care.

While workers suffering from the lack of medical attention they can't afford have to line up for a rare chance like this.

But our media prefers reporting on those exciting rallies, with their dozens of "real people."

We've had a year of political pretense that bi-partisanism and post-racism are real. In other words, a year of lost opportunities.

A Department of Justice staying packed by the Bush administration.

The power of life and death over healthcare-deprived Americans being granted to Joe Lieberman.

There's no new New Deal in the works. Tragically mistaken, but completely predictable, given how far rightward acceptable discourse has been driven over the last thirty years. When Thom Hartmann broadcast from Denmark last January, he noted that the local conservative politicians were mystified by how right-wing Obama is. This researcher found the same reaction in Norway.

While the rest of the economy collapses, one commodity is booming: right-wing violence.

A women's health care provider can be gunned down in church, and the media label the victim, "Abortion Doctor." Both implied and direct messages being that it was only natural for there to have been strong feeling against him. Or, it could be said: he asked for it.

At least NYT readers took the paper to task over its shameful coverage.

And business is booming for right-wing propagandists.

They don't get the fabulous pay of the wingnut class, but the writers at Sadly, No persevere in cutting the right-wing pundits down to size.

From this Spring, as the right howled over DHS' release of its report on right-wing violence, is Gavin M.'s summary of a screed by right-wing blogger Ed Morrissey—

It is ridiculous to blame Bush for commissioning the DHS report, because while the Bush administration might have wanted an assessment of right-wing extremist threats, it would not necessarily have wanted one that blamed it on right-wing extremism.

Gavin adds a footnote—

We've switched Ed's favorite coffee with Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, James Adkisson, Michael F. Griffin, Chad "The Michelle Malkin Anthrax Fraudster" Castagana, John "Dirty Bomb" Cummings, Richard Poplawski, Donald Cooper, Paul Jennings Hill, Tharin Robert Gartrell and associates, David McMenemy, Albert Brock, Francisco Martin Duran, Frank Eugene Corder, John Salvi, Japes Kopp, Bradley T. Kahle, Clayton Waagner, Martin Uphoff, Chad Altman, Shelley Shannon, Timothy Dale Johnson, Buford Furrow, probably some others that we're forgetting, a scheme by Georgia wingnuts to kill Mexican people with machine guns; numerous unknown arsonists, bombers, assailants, and killers, possibly including the Leahy/Daschle anthrax terrorist; assorted anti-government militias; let's not even get into the whole Aryan Nations thing; and last and also pretty much least, Matthew Derosia, who rammed an SUV into an abortion clinic in January '09, in Ed's own demesne of St. Paul, MN. Let's see if he notices!

It's just a routine bit of brilliance from S, N.

As the decade ends—or at least, the atrocious aughts finish—it's Jonah Goldberg who gets a million dollar book deal.

December 2008: Exits

Exit, shredding.

Cheney snowglobe; from Philip Toledano's America, The Giftshop

Well, it is something that distinguishes our guys from the Nazis—who were so proud of their recordkeeping.

Exit, admitting on teevee to authorizing torture.

Exit, ducking. As an Iraqi journalist speaks for millions. An event later commemorated (if not for long).

The shoes being the first honest statement made in Bush's presence since this.

A Sadly, No reader posts the news of Bush's Baghdad presser in this thread. Commenter Smut Clyde will respond, "The insurgency is in its last throws."

Though the shoes might have been served as a contribution to the wardrobe—after all, it takes great effort to clothe a naked emperor.

And our free press does go all out to join in the effort.

By next month, there will be the bizarre performance at his last press conference—

I've thought long and hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and -- is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?

He really believes a photo op would have made everything right.

Of all that was unleased in NOLA, there are still horror stories coming to light only now.

Just this month, Nation writer A.C. Thompson's Katrina's Hidden Race War tells of white vigilantee terror. Including murders, committed with impunity, and with apparent police involvement.

More exits, more players...

Exit, removing inconveniences. "Rove's IT Guru" is killed in the crash of the small plane he had flown for years.

Connell had been warned of possible plane sabotage. And he had been been ordered to testify in Ohio lawyer Cliff Arnebeck's suit alleging Connell's 2004 role in flipping votes from Kerry to Bush.

Exit, stealing. The well-connected are kept busy with the final looting of treasury.

Exit, avoiding prosecution. The lot of them.

It's over a year old, but this from driftglass may be the ultimate punchline of the joke that's been played on the country all these years.

Along with driftglass' corollary punchline:

100 years from now, historians will say that, after eight years of lavishing attention on every ginned-up, half-baked, crackpot, wingnut-financed Clinton rumor, the media felt real, real bad about how awfully they'd behaved and decided to make it up...

...to George W. Bush.

December 2007: What Arte Said

"Very interestingk...
But a Mein Kampf it wasn't."

The writers at Sadly, No have been slipped an advance copy of a book long anticipated. And long mocked: as if its insane theme weren't enough, its author has also missed his publication date by over two years, while using his blog to beg readers to do his research for him.

A few months ago, Jon Swift offered Jonah Goldberg a modest proposal for tackling his theme, "Liberal Fascism"—as explained by LOLcats.

Whenever a meme being pushed by the right reaches new heights of absurdity, someone on S, N will suggest that Peak Wingnut has been reached. Which is immediately countered by the other school of thought: that There Is No Such Thing As Peak Wingnut, which is an endlessly renewable resource.

S, N posts a series on the booklike object, inspiring weeks of mockery of a target that could not be more deserving.

Among the mockery (and LOLcats): here, here, here, and here.

"Revisionism" is such a mild term.

Among other S, N posts deconstructing the book's contents—Joseph McCarthy: Man of the Left.

Using the Hitler-moustached smiley face of the book's cover, Mister Leonard Pierce takes Goldberg's claims that Mussolini was a "socialist," and rates them on a scale of one to five ("an A-bomb of idiocy") Hitler-smileys.

In "The Dread Face Of Liberal Fascism" Brad writes—

Let’s recap what we know about liberal fascists:
• Much like the Nazis, their ranks are teeming with homosexuals.
• Much like the Nazis, they enjoy bossing people around.
• And worst of all, liberal fascists just love lecturing others on the value of (shudder) exercise and nutrition. Just like THE NAZIS DID.
So to find Liberal Fascism’s Grand Führer, we must find someone who’s gay*, bossy and fitness-obsessed. And then it hit me...

Funny stuff, but of course the real point of Goldberg's text is in this part of S, N's takedown—

Believe it or not, we're about to reach the part where he identifies Progressivism itself as fascist. As in, the end of child labor, the forty-hour work-week, the founding of America's national parks — in short, all that totalitarian goose-stepping stuff that interferes with the natural order of human society, i.e. feudalism under the ministry of robber barons.

Goldberg deserves to be made the laughingstock that he is here. But he will undeservedly have platforms in Serious Venues. Such as the LA Times—which dumps Robert Scheer and replaces him with Goldberg.

If there were any doubt about how low we've sunk—the media will push Goldberg's book as a serious work, when thirty years ago his notions would have been considered the fringiest of lunacy.

Though it's clear that the right has long tried to push this stuff. The Wiki entry on the New Deal and corporatism quotes Reagan telling Time in 1976: "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say 'But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'"

Thom Hartmann quotes a re-write of portions of Mein Kampf, as done by Ann Coulter [or fill in the name of any other right-wing pundit]. This version substituting "the Liberals" for "the Jews."

There are people with first-hand knowledge of the Nazis who are still around, horrified by the current parallels, and speaking out.

Historian Fritz Stern.

Former Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz continues to speak and write on the rule of law.

And there are still surviving generations with close links. Ray McGovern writes on December 27, 2007—

...Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel)... as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as "Geschichte eines Deutschen" (The Story of a German).

The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages—in English as "Defying Hitler."

I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that today is the 100th anniversary of Haffner's birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and e-mailed to ask me to "write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush's America. ... This is almost unbelievable."

Unlike Goldberg's doorstop, this is a succinct guide to how fascism really manifests itself. Which is looking all too familiar, with Britt's signs constantly being illustrated.

Just one recent example—revelations of the CIA's destruction of torture evidence, along with past and current obstruction of justice by US Attorneys, Mukasey, and the White House.

The fascist marriage of corporation and state is in plain sight, and in gruesome detail. Former KBR/Halliburton employee in Baghdad, Jamie Leigh Jones testifies before the House Judiciary Committee this month. Since July 2005 she's pursued justice, after her gang-rape by other contractors—immediately followed by the company's destroying evidence and imprisoning Jones in a shipping container.

Jones also testifies that eleven other women have contacted her with similar stories.

During the hearing, Congressman Robert Scott says that the Department of Justice "can enforce with respect to contractors who commit crimes abroad, but it chooses not to."

The DOJ fails to send a representative to the hearing.

The Washington Post publishes a particularly bizarre piece it presents as a human interest story: a Vietnamese immigrant who repays her gratitude to the US as "bomb lady" weapons designer. Among her quotes: "A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot? In Vietnam, our guys didn't have this tool."

Noticing the Post's lack of comment on its "shoot...on the spot" quote, Robert Parry decides to fill the story in a bit more, with, Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death. In which Parry also notes of the Post story—

Similarly, U.S. newspapers have consigned stories about U.S. troops engaging in extrajudicial killings of suspects mostly to pages deep inside the newspapers or have covered the news sympathetically. While some harsh criticism has fallen on trigger-happy Blackwater "security contractors," U.S. troops have been given largely a free pass.

And we have our political imprisonments.

There's a scene in "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," where Anton Walbrook's refugee character is questioned by English immigration officials. He describes life in Germany after WWI, until the Nazis came to power—

After the war years crime was increasing, and the honest citizens were having a hard job to put the gangsters in jail. Well, I needn't tell you, sir, that in Germany the gangsters finally succeeded in putting the honest citizens in jail.

December 2006: Hillbillies And Other People Of The Year

hillbillybento.com

Given responsibility to arrange catering for the year-end faculty bash, Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant chose someone from her neck of the boondocks.

Party time approaches, with no sign of food delivery.

Jesus' BAA makes a frantic call to the caterer...

Who done wrote the wrong day on his calendar.

Clever Sister, who long worked in the food biz, raises virtual eyebrows—

OMG!!!!! That's something!
Did they run out to the 7-11 to get some vittles?

The lunch is moved to the next day, when the guy promises there will be much wonderous comping.

"Bologna & velveeta? Stuck on frilly toothpicks?" asks CS.

Time has met the Person of The Year, and it is Us.

watertiger agrees that she is the Average American—

1. I'm adamantly against the war.
2. I think George Bush is a criminal failure who should be impeached.
3. I hold down at least 2 (well, 3, if you count the blogging) jobs to keep ahead of the cost of living.

And so on.

whitehouse.org captures the quality of year-end reporting. The bloodthirstiness and triumphalism around Saddam Hussein's execution, here and here.

And of the tears shed over another death—Remembering Gerry Ford: President Bush Mourns Loss of Innovative Bestower of Felony-Erasing Pardons.

In other predictable events, the Frat Boy-In-Chief sneers at a persistent reporter: "It's bad in Iraq. That help?"

And baits Senator-elect Jim Webb about his son serving in Iraq. This, after being asked to be especially sensitive, because of the son's recent, narrow escape from death.

Not a circumstance Bush could conceivably have had anything to do with.

December 2005 (II): Brand Loyalty

Poor Clever Sister: forced to hear a co-worker's daily news roundup, accompanied by hearty praise of her source—"I'm a liberal! I listen to NPR!"

Now that the latest corporate takeover has hit local phone service, this woman burbles: "I'm so happy it's AT&T again! It's what I grew up with!"

This is after revelations of the scope of NSA spying on Americans' calls, accomplished with the "cooperation of American telecommunications companies."

CS' annoying co-worker also keeps announcing, "I can't wait until 2008, to vote for John McCain—he's a maverick!" Now, wherever could she have gotten that idea?

CS finds this seasonal item—

A bah humbug moment
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
BARRIE BARBER
THE SAGINAW NEWS

A Saginaw Township leader wants an apology from national talk show TV and radio host Bill O'Reilly for his on air declaration that the suburb has banned anyone from wearing red and green clothing.

At Democratic Underground, where this excerpt still dwells, a commenter says O'Reilly has made this claim before—when it supposedly happened in Plano, Texas.

It would seem illogical for O'Reilly to pick on good Republican-voting places in "The Heartland" for his rants. But this must be part of your right-wing demagogue's confidence that cognitive dissonance is unknown to his audience, since it would require cognitive ability in the first place.

Just as it's fine for him to scream about "values," while writing bad, dirty fiction. And whose sexual harassment of an employee includes turning a previously innocent vegetarian dish into something revolting.

At work, the funds raised for poor folk have been distributed. And the thank-you cards are posted in the lunchroom.

One is from a woman who tells us how she prayed for her family to have Christmas this year. She is not surprised that her prayers were answered, because, "My God is an awesome God!"

Her God, apparently, being the God of Cheap Shit Made By Chinese Slave Labor.

And there's the letter from a man who tells how he's never asked for a handout, yet—he was laid off; he developed a life-threatening medical condition; he has small children; his unemployment (which he only took for the sake of the children) ran out...

All detailed in several pages the guy needs for self-justification.

Finally thanking those responsible for the gift, the wonderfully voluntary and non-governmental people [never mind that their paychecks are subsidized by State and Federal funds...], Mr. Fox Target Audience signs off—

I could wish you "Happy Holidays," but instead I will say: "Merry Christmas!"

A bold, defiant stand, in his own mind.

He may have nothing else, but his friends on the teevee will make sure he always has imaginary liberals to blame for threatening his Christmas...

December 2005 (I): War On Brains

Soon after my arrival in this office, Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant forwards me a pantyhose coupon—"I hope you can use this! I send them to all my friends!"

She has "friends"? When the other workplace fundies try avoiding her, because she creeps out even them?

Of course, it may only have been meant to suggest that pantyhose are something I should be wearing...

Jesus' BAA does take sartorial improvement as one of her Rapture™ preparation duties.

Once, as I'm looking through the Chair's Office drive for a file, I come upon a Word doc of hers: "How to choose the right purse for your personality," copied from a cheesy site by one "Crystal Coons." I can't find the document or that site (if it still exists)—too bad I didn't save Jesus' BAA's extracurricular work at the time.

In over a year of having to brace myself to go to this environment every week day, listening to "Morning Sedition" until 8:00 was a sanity preserver. Something no longer there, since Air America yanked the show this month.

Considering how much we, the peons, have our lives ruled by executive decisions over which we have no say, this is a small thing. Yet it reaches some classic level of executive stupidity, connected as it is to the media climate we live in.

After the cancellation was announced last month, the network was deluged with support for the hosts and pleas to continue the show. But the program was deemed "not funny" by an audience of one: the CEO who wanted the show axed. Air America may not have much of a reach, but its management proves,unsurprisingly, that those who control media are those who shouldn't.

It's true that the show often made me late getting into the shower. And—a geezer on a rush hour bus full of sullen, half-asleep undergrads—I often had stretches of laughing uncontrollably.

There are audio archives here, thanks to a fan. This has selections for entire shows and individual segments, including the Jim Earl bits that had me hopelessly cracked up on the bus. "Rapture Watch" and "The War on Brains"—what could have been more appropriate, just before my daily in-person encounter with such things.

Jesus' BAA has been out since having shoulder surgery at the beginning of the month. This was supposed to have happened next March, but the hospital suddenly re-scheduled a few weeks ago.

Cruella was livid that Jesus' BAA "just ups and leaves when she feels like it!" She has spent the whole month bitching about Jesus' BAA, to everyone in earshot.

That even includes me—when I have to ask Cruella about something, I get a tirade on the lines of, "it's here, though it should have been done this way, but Jesus' BAA is incapable of that."

There already was a temp working on this floor; she has since been planted at the empty desk in our office, where she can listen daily as Cruella and Ghengis attack the missing one.

Whenever Jesus' BAA is not around, Red State Girl can be counted on to step in and keep up the annoyance level. She's another character I might feel a little sympathy for, if she weren't so obnoxious about trying to bully the other women into her schemes as would-be social director. And she always comes across like she's taking names of the gals who don't fall in line.

RSG is forever bringing in fund-raising projects on behalf of nieces and nephews, and I often hear her talk about how much time she spends with them. Judging from how officious she is with the female employees, I assume that she hijacks the kids to have people small enough to dominate. And I also assume that she uses them as a public shield, to look as if she were really a married lady with kids.

RSG's current project: selling plastic baggies of "Reindeer Food"—

Make a wish and close your eyes tight,
Then sprinkle on your lawn at night.
As Santa's reindeer fly and roam
This food will guide them to your home.
For your gift to the reindeer and Rudolph
Your wish may be real,
Your dreams may come true.

A pome so bad, I was sure she wrote it herself. Until I found it all over the Web—along with the recipe for oats mixed with glitter. Schools all over the Murkan Heartland must be making the kids raise funds with this. So there must also be mass wildlife poisonings from glitter ingestion.

I have no idea what blend of horror at the thought of idleness plus need for martyrdom motivates her. But on the 23rd Jesus' BAA drags herself from her sickbed, stopping by to distribute "gifts"—bags of homemade cookies and candies.

I didn't see her (or what kind of condition she was in)—just came back from lunch to find the bag left on my chair. Sugar cookies, three kinds of fudge, chocolate-coated peanuts, and peanut butter balls. I unloaded nearly all of it in the lunch room, but kept some of the peanut things, thinking my choc-aholic brother-in-law might like them.

He wasn't home when I got there, but Clever Sister tried a chocolate. And immediately spat it out, with an outraged—"Is she trying to poison you?!" The peanuts tasted rotten, the coating was dollar store quality fake flavor... of course I should have known better than to think anything from Jesus' BAA could be edible.

This is Jesus' BAA in a [rancid] nutshell: she believes she's doing a wonderful good deed and goes to so much work over the gastronomic equivalent of her "camp crafts."

Jesus' BAA will return to work early in the new year. When she will sit happily at her keyboard, and say, "It's amazing how much your shoulder hurts after surgery!...eh HEH eh HEH eh HEH..."

December 2004 (II): Watch Your Words

Ministry of Homeland Security poster: The Propaganda Remix Project

The family friends who have lived under fascism find current events fighteningly familiar. One is Spanish and grew up under Franco—since last month, he's been busy planning his return to Spain early next year. er:

Another friend has been a frequent point of reference, as she compares her past experience with what she observes now. As in, "That's just like the Soviet Union!"

She also worries about her 8-year old son speaking his mind, as Clever Sister notes when forwarding this—

When the two plainclothes Loudoun County sheriff's investigators showed up on her Leesburg doorstep, Pamela Albaugh got nervous. But when they told her why they were there, she got angry: A complaint had been filed alleging that her 11-year old son had made "anti-American and violent" statements in school.

Albaugh, her Israeli husband, and their children previously lived in several other countries. Yishai, an outspokenly anti-war 11-year old who was upset by a Veterans' Day assignment to write a letter to marines, burst out with some words to the effect that he didn't care if all the marines died.

His mother thought that the matter had been resolved by conferences with the school, followed by a day of in-school suspension for Yishai. Then investigators showed up for "two hours of polite but intense and personal questioning"—

They asked how she felt about 9/11 and the military. They asked whether she knows any foreigners who have trouble with American policy. They mentioned a German friend who had been staying with the family and asked whether the friend sympathized with the Taliban. They also inquired whether she might be teaching her children "anti-American values," she said.

"It was intimidating," [Albaugh] said. "I told them it's like a George Orwell novel, that it felt like they were the thought police. If someone would have asked me five years ago if this was something my government would do, I would have said never."

Finally, of "lessons learned"—

Albaugh said that Yishai is not violent and that the school could have used the classroom incident as a "teachable moment," helping him learn to say what he was feeling in a less offensive manner.

Instead, Yishai said he has learned that it is not worth challenging authority. "At the end of the day, you lose," he said, adding: "All of these freedoms and things they're supposed to uphold, they bash them."

Our free press can hand-wring about Ukraine, while steering clear of Ohio.

As unwelcome as truth-tellers are, one slipped through in 1996, via a new-fangled news source, "The Internet." The ensuing years of professional frustration ended in Gary Webb's suicide this month.

Jeff Cohen's obit: R.I.P. Gary Webb -- Unembedded Reporter.

America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb is the piece by former AP and Newsweek reporter, Robert Parry. He recalls Webb's 1996 investigative reports on the CIA's links to Nicaraguan Contra drug trading of the 1980's, how this introduced crack into the U.S., and how the Reagan-Bush administration protected those involved. And how a 1998 CIA Inspector General's report largely confirmed Webb's reporting.

And as to how this reflects on the gatekeepers of news—

Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s. The big news outlets were always hot on the trail of some titillating scandal – the O.J. Simpson case or the Monica Lewinsky scandal – but the major media could no longer grapple with serious crimes of state.

Marc Cooper:

First the L.A. Times helped kill off Gary Webb’s career. Then, eight years later, after Webb committed suicide this past weekend, the Times decided to give his corpse another kick or two, in a scandalous, self-serving and ultimately shameful obituary. It was the culmination of the long, inglorious saga of a major newspaper dropping the ball journalistically, and then extracting relentless revenge on an out-of-town reporter who embarrassed it.

Parry notes that instead of using Webb's death to set the record straight, "the Times acted as if there never had been an official investigation confirming many of Webb's allegations."

And—

To this day, no editor or reporter who missed the contra-drug story has been punished for his or her negligence. Indeed, many of them are now top executives at their news organizations. On the other hand, Gary Webb’s career never recovered.

Of Webb's contribution, says Parry—

...it should be noted that his great gift to American history was that he – along with angry African-American citizens – forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any American administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans.

Cooper quotes Webb, in his interview—

...for a book [Into the Buzzsaw] profiling 18 journalists who found themselves discredited or censored. Let his own words be a more fitting epitaph than the hack-job L.A. Times obituary:

"If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me . . . I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests . . .

"And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job . . . The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress."

Still, at times there are small cracks in the arrangements that have been made—as when Yes Men Hoax on BBC Reminds World of Dow Chemical's Refusal to Take Responsibility for Bhopal Disaster.

December 2004 (I): Ukraine, Ohio

Grand Lake Theater

Late last month:

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on [November 24] said the United States does not accept the results of Ukraine's presidential elections as legitimate, citing "credible reports of fraud and abuse."

Powell has said plenty of other things with a straight face throughout his career.

But the irony is not lost on Columbus-based The Free Press, as it continues ongoing election coverage, including numerous county by county reports of November 2 vote-rigging, undercounting, and withholding of voting machines.

Citizens groups file legal action to force a recount—which will be conducted largely in precincts picked by a key figure in the fraud, Ohio Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair, J. Kenneth Blackwell. As The Free Press describes in its final report of the month, Ohio's official non-recount ends amidst new evidence of fraud, theft and judicial contempt mirrored in New Mexico.

Clever Sister forwards this, from the Ukraine—

A third exit poll, by Frank Luntz, a pollster for the U.S. Republican Party, and Douglas Schoen, of the Washington based market research company Penn, Schoen & Berland, showed Yushchenko winning with 56 to Yanukovych's 41 percent, Schoen said. The margin of error was 2 percentage points.

"Crap - that was Kerry's problem," adds CS, but "Yuschenko's American wife worked for Reagan & Bush Daddy."

It happens that the Columbus area is the site of an actual prosecution of charges connected to the Iraq war. The nature of the prosecution—

At a time when some U.S. troops in Iraq are complaining they have to scrounge for equipment, six Ohio based reservists were court martialed for taking Army vehicles abandoned in Kuwait by other units so they could carry out their own unit's mission to Iraq.

The six receive six-month sentences for theft, destruction of Army property and conspiracy to cover up the crimes.

The sentence comes just a few days after Rumsfeld's encounter with some other guardsmen. Also reported by whitehouse.org: MEDIA ALERT: CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF SECRETARY RUMSFELD'S FRIENDLY, NON-CONTENTIOUS BULL SESSION WITH JOYOUS, 100% GUNG-HO NATIONAL GUARDSMEN IN KUWAIT.

After a few weeks at boot camp, the son of Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant has left the marines. It was a medical discharge: Sonny, Jr. injured himself wearing a pack.

I've spoken to Sonny, Jr. when he's phoned Jesus' BAA. As I've spoken to Sonny, Sr., and the daughter: they're all mouth-breathers.

It comes as no surprise that Sonny, Jr. couldn't march and carry a pack at the same time—really not a cheap joke, just a fact. And I'm happy for Jesus' BAA, that her son will not be In Harm's Way. But I also know how puffed up she will be that Sonny, Jr. "served in the Marines." While he's safe, and other people's sons die for her Leader.