Pretty bizarre to hear McCain complaining about the media and how they treat him. It’s kind of like grousing about your family or your best friend. For chrissake, they freaking love the guy. Why else would he be running nearly even with Obama in the polls? His campaign is amazingly flat-footed and visionless, he gets details (Czechoslovakia, for instance) wrong repeatedly, he has yet to demonstrate any awareness of our economic crisis, and he thinks Iraq shares a border with Pakistan. Speaking of Iraq, he has been as phenomenally wrong and boneheaded as the administration he has so frequently embraced. His pronouncements about the “success” of the “surge” reek of desperation, like an arsonist telling the judge he helped put out the fire he started after the building had already burned to the ground. The mainstream press challenges almost none of his positions, blithely passing along the campaign fiction that he is an expert on foreign and security policy. They hold him responsible for neither his words nor his work as a senator. And yet he complains – go figure.

Part of what the press is doing here reflects their usual subservience to power (something that puts them in the same boat as McCain). Those who hold economic and political sway over national affairs would prefer to see McCain elected, and so the press rides along. (If the Earth were taken over by space aliens, I’m sure the press would serve them, too.) but another component of their somewhat forgiving attitude towards McCain is a reflection of the general lack of an effective opposition party in the United States – one made up of working people and the poor, consistently representing their interests in opposition to corporate power and an expansive (and expensive) American empire. The liberal-left in this country has given ground on issue after issue, conceding where no surrender was necessary. They’ve allowed the right to canonize Ronald Reagan and, by extension, his disastrous policies. They let reactionaries re-write the history of the 1960s and 70s into something utterly unrecognizable to anyone who was alive then. Small wonder the press plays along with the G.O.P. – the Democrats do, too.

One other thing. We live in a time when military service has become such a rare and exotic experience that politicians and the press are positively in awe of it, rhetorically speaking. When I was a pre-teenager, I was surrounded by people who had either been in the armed forces or were about three inches away from being conscripted. Today, very few middle class folks could say the same thing. As that experience recedes into history, McCain’s campaign can get away with ads like the “Summer of Love” TVC that appears to portray 1967 America as a nation divided between a) hippies who chose to stay home and party, and b) patriots who chose to fight for freedom in Vietnam (!). Spoiler alert: Those freaky kids they show – the young men, anyway – were mostly all on the draft rolls and probably self-medicating as a result of the terror of that circumstance. Not only was that situation frightening and dangerous, but those who were inclined to resist had almost no support. Today it’s not hard to imagine saying no to a draft (if any such thing existed). Back then, it was pretty much unprecedented. That’s part of what made those years so gut-wrenching.

Here’s my point. If the press doesn’t at least try to remind Americans of their own history, what the hell use are they?

luv u,

jp

A few weeks ago, we saw the Democrats cave on the revised FISA law, voting with the administration and congressional republicans on a bill that would grant the co-conspiratorial telecom giants retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits while underwriting Bush’s claim that the president can break pretty much any law any time he wants to (as well as spy on any of us who happen to communicate with people beyond our national borders – see Sen. Feingold’s appearance on Democracy Now! ). Now we can watch in disgust as the party of Jefferson caves on the question of opening vast wilderness areas and the continental shelf to drilling by the obscenely overfed oil companies. Clearly Harry Reid and company have one beady eye on opinion polls that suggest a majority of Americans favor this giveaway in the misguided belief that it will bring down the price of gas. When I say “misguided”, I mean actively so not only by a shameless political leadership but by an industry with more money than any industry has ever possessed in the history of this planet – money that buys a lot of misleading and utterly nauseating marketing about drilling “more respectfully” and tapping “the power of human energy.”

When I started seeing the airwaves saturated with this bullshit, I thought it was mostly defensive on their part. They were making ridiculous amounts of money off of us, fueling climate change, while we were losing our shirts… so the image needed a little burnishing, let’s say. Now I’m convinced this is more an offensive strategy. (Naomi Klein has talked about this a bit lately.) This lease deal is an enormous wealth opportunity for them, and they surely saw it coming. Continental shelf oil is well worth drilling for when oil is at $140 a barrel, so why not get the politicians to open up all those federal lands? They can build support by spreading the lie that drilling will reduce the price of oil. And the oil companies can buy all the influence they need, filling campaign coffers and hiring the best lobbyists in town, so enlisting our politicians’ cooperation (Republican and Democratic) shouldn’t be a problem.

Apologists for congressional Democrats who are leaning toward supporting increased drilling argue that they are responding to public opinion. But any public sentiment in favor of this policy is the product of some pretty serious demagoguery. Seriously… how hard would it be to articulate a convincing argument against drilling off the coast of Florida or in ANWR? For one thing, it will only benefit firms like Halliburton, which is already making a fortune off of electrocuting our soldiers in Iraq with their shoddy workmanship. And as Klein points out, this type of capital intensive oil production is already taking place on a massive scale in western Canada, which has become the biggest supplier of petroleum to the U.S. and one bound by NAFTA to provide us with oil even if it means sacrificing their own energy security. And yet, this massive supply of oil from a highly reliable neighbor has not exactly brought the price down, has it? Why should we think developing much smaller reserves off shore and in Alaska would make the slightest difference (especially when industry experts say it won’t)?

Fact is, the oil companies want the price high. That is, in fact, what makes these domestic leases particularly valuable – they’re not worth shit if oil drops below $80 a barrel. So… why aren’t Harry Reid and company saying that every day and twice on Sunday?

luv u,

jp

Okay, what have you got? Mildred… Fitch. Mildred Fitch, 1429 Mulberry Lane, Aurolias, NJ. Got it. Who’s next? Get… Get… Stuffed. Get Stuffed. And where does “Get” live? Up… my… HEY!!

Oh, hi. Okay, good enough, how are you? Great, great. What are we doing? Funny you should ask. We’re working on our mailing list. In fact, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and I were just compiling names when you logged on. Frankly, it could use a little work. We haven’t released a full-length album in almost nine years – that’s NINE YEARS to those of you who are hard of hearing – and our list has kind of gone to seed in the interim. Truth be told, we sent out a little teaser message to the folks on our 2000 Years To Christmas list, and it bounced back so hard the sucker hit me square in the face. (I think it loosened a tooth or two, actually.) It’s been a rough nine years on our constituency, friends, and a lot of them have moved on to bigger, greener pastures. C’est domage.

Okay, well… that experience was a little unnerving. So we took it up with our label, Loathsome Prick, and they put us in touch with their Marketing V.P., Gertrude Al-Kabar, who suggested (no… fairly demanded) that we build a new list. “What the hell,” I said, “most of our most loyal fans are beyond the orbit of Saturn. The post office doesn’t ordinarily deliver to rural routes in that zone.” She was, however, insistent on this point, and we decided to at least appear as if we were doing something about it. Matt took the opportunity to sit down with the two Lincolns and ask about their presidential campaign experiences, direct mail appeals, that sort of thing. (Not a lot of help there – in point of fact, they got into a fist fight. Something to do with Steven Douglas.) John and I spoke with Mitch Macaphee, but he has nothing but contempt for the social sciences and would never associate himself with something so crude as a direct mail campaign. (Now handbills he might agree to, but not direct mail.)

You get the drift. Once again, we are left to our own devices. So with nearly two names on our mailing list (call it one), one of which resides at our own address (man-sized tuber), we set ourselves to aggressively expanding our database… by swiping names from the phone book. Foolishly simple, isn’t it? Don’t know why I never thought of it before. All we do is send junk mail to people at random. In fact, that’s such a wildly adventurous idea, we should try to sell it to other bands. Hey, Coldplay! Hey, Captured By Robots! Here’s a great way to get heard by strangers! Send them shit in the mail! (Shouting across the internet? Another new communications strategy! Get Gertrude on the phone!)

Okay, so we’re pulling names at random from the phone book. And Marvin is getting kind of surly after an hour or so. Fatigue? I don’t think so. He’s a little sore about his credits on the new album. Marvin claims to have mixed no less than four of the sixteen songs on International House. I’m sure that’s an exaggeration, but… frankly I don’t remember who mixed what at this point. And what’s the name of the band again? Can’t say. Can’t … say….

Man, it has been a long time since the last one. We need more names, damnit!

Amazing thing happened this past week: the Iraqi government appears to have actually represented one of the main concerns of the nation it purports to represent – namely that the occupying army of the United States start making definite plans for withdrawal… that is, total withdrawal from their country. One spokesperson for al-Maliki actually talked about a timetable for pulling out. Now, this is the government the Bush administration is so very adamant about protecting. The mere mention of a timetable on this side of the ocean is an invitation to be denounced as a “surrender monkey”. Those who’ve advanced the idea are roundly accused of undermining the Baghdad government, whose stability has been bought by the blood of our soldiers, etc. And yet, this is the opinion of the vast majority of Iraqis, so it’s little wonder Maliki would bring it up a) while status of forces agreement talks are going on, and b) when there are elections coming up. Maliki’s party has a slight problem with being seen as an indigenous political movement (i.e. Dawa and SCIRI were exile parties, SCIRI formed in Iran with help from the dreaded Revolutionary Guard). This is their version of a gas tax holiday, I suppose.

Either way, it seems we’ve been asked to leave. That can only mean one thing, if history is any guide: time for a new Iraqi government. This issue is a bit more complicated than it used to be, of course. Even though there are some paleolithic imperialists in the Bush orbit, I doubt they have the bottle to pull an outright coup d’etat, like we used to in the good old bad old days. Iran’s Mossadeq, Guatemala’s Arbenz, Chile’s Allende… even a longtime asset like South Vietnam’s Diem was dispatched with little thought to what would follow. In Vietnam, it was one desperate general after another, until they settled on the reliably fanatical Nguyen Van Thieu, who seemed more than content to preside over the utter destruction of his country under relentless and unprecedented American firepower. His predecessors were ejected most often because they were caught seeking some kind of rapprochement with the NLF. Not what Washington wanted then… or wants now.

Different war, different time, right? True enough. But the principle still applies. Suppose for a moment everything goes swimmingly in Iraq, from the Iraqi perspective. Suppose there’s a serious and deep reconciliation among the various sectarian and ethnic groupings, and that they all agree on one thing – that they want us to go home. Would we leave? I doubt it. As I’ve said here before, we didn’t invade Iraq to leave it; we came to stay, maybe as long as 100 years, as McCain suggested. (The oil would certainly be tapped out by then.) The administration and its allies have become very frank about wanting a military presence there to secure access to the second largest oil reserves in the world (and among the most profitable, as well). We’re building permanent bases and trying to push a status of forces agreement on a nation we basically destroyed over the course of the last 18 years. In the current atmosphere of rising gas prices, I’m sure our politicians believe that Americans will tolerate such a long-term commitment if they believe affordable gas may be a result. That remains to be seen… but will Iraqis tolerate it?

My guess is no. And though this hasn’t been an ultimatum, we may well be feeling that door hitting us in the ass quite soon.

luv u,

jp

Seems like more than a few people are appalled at what appears to be Obama’s recent lurch to the right. Actually, I think some of the stuff he’s saying now is more like where he’s been politically since walking onto the national stage four years ago. In spite of a lot of the hype about a liberal voting record, the O-Man is no George McGovern (sadly). He’s been hugely cautious since becoming a U.S. Senator, and whereas he has the rhetorical gifts to advance progressive positions (particularly ones – like universal health care – that tend to be popular to begin with), he doesn’t have those issues deep in his gut. I think this is a textbook case of political relativity. Here’s how it works: At the beginning of the election cycle, when there are eight or more members of your party contending for the nomination, there’s a fair chance that one of them is going to be somewhere close to your way of thinking. So you might back that person, and if s/he fails to make the first cut, you might look at the remaining contenders for the next best thing. Like… starting with Kucinich and moving to Edwards, because he seems closer to Kucinich than any of the other remaining Dems.

Still with me? Bully! Okay, so say your Edwards drops out, and you’re left with the somewhat uninspiring choice of the DLC-powered Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize Bush’s endless war in Iraq (i.e. gave a drunk a loaded bazooka) and Barack Obama, Mr. Ultra-Cautious, who spoke out against the war when he was not in a position to vote on it, and has since voted to fund the war. In that match-up, Obama may feel more like a committed progressive, even if he isn’t one. He’s just progressive relative to the other remaining candidate (Clinton). Now, as the presumptive Democratic nominee, he stands against McCain, who has been busily burnishing his right-wing credentials (on alternate Tuesdays). This allows Obama to embrace his inner “moderate”, and still seem progressive relative to McCain. At the same time, the tendency is for the winning candidate to assume some of the policies of the other contenders, thereby broadening his/her appeal.

So… you end up with this candidate who’s an amalgamation of all these other candidates – like someone added them all up and figured the average. As it happens, that ends up being somewhere around where Obama lives politically. What happens next? What the hell am I, Kreskin? Well…. here’s my guess (since I asked). Obama will play the muddle in the middle for the next few weeks. Then he’ll do something like what Gore did in 2000 – just before the Democratic convention, he’ll deliver some firebreathing populist speeches to get the base energized, knock a good one home at the convention, and use that as his basic stump sermon for the rest of the campaign. If he’s elected (big if), he’ll go back the that middle-ing Amalgaman place before inauguration day. My guess – no guarantees.

Our problem is simply that no candidate in this race is proposing the kind of tectonic policy shift that would be commensurate with the problems we face. That can only come from us. Election day is just the beginning.

luv u,

jp

Heard a McCain foreign policy adviser on NPR’s All Things Considered this week. (I suppose that’s a bit more relevant a news feature than the story about astronauts voting in space that ran a few days earlier on ludicrous Morning Edition.) The McCain guy had worked for prominent Republicans before, of course – namely Trent Lott and Donald Rumsfeld. That’s right – Lott, the retrograde southern conservative politician who was so reflexively racist that he made a comment he couldn’t back away from even in the wake of the G.O.P.’s 2002 congressional electoral victory… his foreign policy adviser. And, of course, Donald Rumsfeld, undoubtedly the most disastrous Defense Secretary since Robert McNamara (middle name: Strange)… How reassuring to know that McCain is getting the same advice Rummy enjoyed. So… what did this adviser to great minds have to say about the war in Iraq? Well, the NPR interviewer (Robert Siegel) stuck to narrow issues relating to the “metrics of success”, as Rumsfeld might have put it. McCain’s man bobbed and weaved a bit, saying we can start thinking about leaving when Al Qaeda is defeated. Asked how we would know when that had happened, he told Siegel they will be defeated when they are no longer a strategic threat. What does that mean in concrete terms? Ahem.

I think the general assumption is that the administration and other hawks don’t want to nail down what victory in Iraq looks like because the issues involved are far too complex to be reduced to such a simple formulation (i.e. only 3 car bombings a year means we’ve won!). I think the truth is they don’t want to talk about it because they have no intention of ever leaving Iraq. There is simply no point in discussing it as far as they are concerned. The notion of staying in Iraq permanently is deeply unpopular with the American public, so it doesn’t make a good talking point. Instead, they need to resort to blather about “kinetic” power and force projection capabilities, blah-blah-blah, so that people’s eyes will glaze over before they catch on that what’s really being discussed here is the architecture of a very, very long-term U.S. presence in country. Of course, this propensity is not limited to McCain’s people or the G.O.P. as a whole – I recently heard the New York Times Baghdad bureau chief talking about how 60 U.S. bases in Iraq isn’t all that many, really. (Oh, sure… 60’s nothing, unless you’re talking about Iranian bases in, say, Mexico.)

Five years into the occupation there is a strong institutional disposition toward maintaining the Iraq enterprise. While the Republicans express this in terms of continuing the current policy, in essence, the Democrats will talk about a residual force to protect the massive U.S. embassy (forbidden city, really), train Iraqi soldiers and police, and “fight terrorism” in case al Qaeda raises its profile again. That’s what the Obama camp is saying – not exactly a radical departure. This isn’t anything new, of course. The U.S. presence in Vietnam involved a substantial institutional investment that almost no American politician wanted to completely back away from. (The French colonial experience in Vietnam perhaps even more so.) So don’t think pulling the lever for the O-man is going to end this war. The war will end only when we insist upon:

1. a complete withdrawal of our military and associated contractors from Iraq;
2. dismantling and abandoning the bases we’ve built over the past five years;
3. using some of the money NOT spent on the occupation to help Iraqis put their country back together again (to the extent that that’s possible).

Basically the McGovern-Polk plan, which neither party endorses. Same old same old.

Whoever wins this fall, we will need to push for an end to this war… and push harder than any of us might have thought necessary. Otherwise it will continue, with grim consequences we have to fully realize.

luv u,

jp

Dubya – or as Jon Stewart calls him, “still-President Bush” – pulled another grand tour this past week, dropping in on our various European allies, mugging with the crypto-fascist Sarkozy (perhaps comparing notes on how to be slightly less unpopular than he is right now), and generally doing all he can to undermine any chance of a reduction in international tensions. He took a few ceremonial swings at the Iranian punching bag, made some thinly veiled threats against Syria, etc. Quite a performance. What a pity he has to come home so soon. Wouldn’t it be great if he just kept traveling until after inauguration day? Though I suppose it doesn’t do any harm for people to see him around the White House with some regularity, if only to serve as a grim reminder of how idiotic we were to put him there in the first place. Not that a simple trip to the gas station shouldn’t be enough to accomplish that.

One place he hasn’t stopped in on lately is the failed state he created out of what was once Iraq. Whereas they managed to drop his wife into a section of Afghanistan that wasn’t blowing up long enough for her to say how sweet it is there, no surprise visit to Baghdad was conjured for junior himself. It’s almost as though they don’t want to draw too much attention to the conflict; that people are now focused on other difficulties closer to home, and that’s the way they like it. They can pursue their deeply unpopular (on both sides of the ocean) agenda without undue scrutiny, such as their status of forces agreement that would essentially authorize permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, with highly favorable terms towards American defense contractors. They’re probably hoping we won’t be thinking about that when we march into the voting booth – that we’ll instead be obsessing over Obama’s ex-preacher for his persistent blackness, or pondering how Cindy-Lou McCain looks like a refugee from Petticoat Junction (at least when she’s visiting the heartland).

Bush did spare a half-hour or so to play consoler-in-chief in the flood ravaged mid-west. (“You’ll come back better,” he reportedly told some Iowans – don’t know about them, but I was certainly scratching my head over that one.) If nothing else, he’s becoming the master of disaster; a kind of political Irwin Allen. It’s almost as if things were just waiting for him to arrive before they started totally falling apart. (Some things, of course, took a little coaxing.) Hell, even his “success stories” are disasters. More U.S. soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, for instance, than in Iraq. And while they are portraying Iraq as quiet and safe, it is still too dangerous for any of the 4.5 million refugees to return home, as Amnesty International has pointed out. For many, there are no homes to go to. They brought about a Bosnian-style ethnic cleansing, and now that it’s over, they call it success. Except that we can’t leave… because it’s not over. Got all that?

I’ve said it before – we’re not staying in Iraq to achieve some lofty goal. They’re merely inventing lofty goals because they intend to stay. That was always the intention, and so it remains. So wherever Bush goes from now on, he’ll always be in Iraq… and if we do nothing to stop it, so will we.

luv u,

jp