new since…

Fake news…it’s not just Jon Stewart and The Onion, but the regular news that’s full of shit. Here is a fascinating history of fake news in America…it goes back much further than you might think!

_____________________________________________________

Another clueless corporate media reporter falsifies Reagan’s atrocious record on — well, pretty much everything, but in this case Central America. The pretense that he supported human rights there is particularly nauseating.

Let me state for the record: any “historian” who considers Reagan a great, a good, or even an acceptable president, I have no respect for. He was much like W, except that he operated under more restraints. He took a right wing, usually quite unpopular position on every significant issue. He was an enemy of the poor and of civil liberties, he undermined the working class majority every way he could, and with Iran-Contra he made a mockery of constitutional government. He brutalized Central America under the pretense of fighting communism, although the movements “we” were fighting weren’t even Communist. He manufactured the first ever super-sized peacetime budget deficits by combining humongous tax cuts for the rich with massive military spending increases, which his administration justified by slanting intelligence to exaggerate Soviet strength. And he brought down Communism in the same sense that Nixon brought down acid rock.

The “great communicator”? On TV, Reagan was known mostly for his use of simple-minded anecdotes to “prove” sweeping points, for his inability or unwillingness to make elementary distinctions between truth and falsehood, and for his frequent, politically costly gaffes. Widely considered the least electable major Republican candidate in 1980, he unsurprisingly won anyway against the highly unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter after a campaign in which Reagan’s own team admitted he performed poorly, endangering his once-massive lead with risky statements until, on the eve of the election, the race was too close to call. In the end Reagan won big, but only because he dominated the last-minute, “hold your nose” vote; dissatisfaction with the incumbent was, as usual, simply more important to voters than doubts about the challenger.

Once Reagan took office, his approval ratings shot up and down like a roller coaster; as with most presidents, they primarily reflected the state of the economy. Among all the presidents since Gallup started polling in the 1930′s, Reagan’s average approval ratings were, well, average — smack dab in the middle of the pack. (The same goes for his “personal likability” ratings, for whatever little that may be worth.) He did have the good fortune to have his popularity at its peak just in time for the 1984 and 1988 elections — and the nation consequently had the bad fortune of having eight more years with Republican presidents.

On the other hand, for any readers too young to remember the old goat, if you haven’t learned your history, I can’t blame you if you think he was some sort of demigod. After all, isn’t that exactly what you’ve always been told?

_____________________________________________________

Huge story from Seymour Hersh, completely ignored by the corporate media, showing that some of the people “we” are supposed to be fighting may well be directed from Cheney’s office:

THE REDIRECTION:
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?

Now, I don’t buy into his subtitle at all. There’ s no such thing as a war on terror, any more than there’s such a thing as a war on tanks. You cannot fight a tactic, only specific users of it. But although Hersh more or less accepts Acting President Bush’s account of what happened on 9/11, and doesn’t cleanly break with the cause of American imperalism, he is nevertheless an effective critic of it — within his limits — and an excellent journalist.

The redoubtable Brad Friedman over at THE BRAD BLOG has just posted yet another on-point piece, partially dispelling the corporate media obfuscation of Congress’ very real responsibility with respect to the the troop “surge”:

All of the Sunday news shows today were abuzz with talk of Bush’s reported troop “surge” plan for Iraq. The general theme was that, as Commander-in-Chief, Bush could do whatever he wanted in regard to troop levels and the only thing Congress could do about it was to use their control of the purse strings by voting to stop funding the war.

… But aside from cutting off funding for the war, now or in the future, there is another option for the moment in answer to Bush’s predicted call for a “surge”; demand that the White House release their estimates of the number of casualties we will incur during such a “surge.”

…It seems to me that any plan to increase troop strength would come with some sort of general estimate from the Pentagon as to the cost in increased, or decreased, causalities [sic] for our troops. Congress must call on the White House to go on record with that estimate!

Apart from debunking the idea that Congress has no effective options, Brad’s full piece goes on to point out that holding Bush to an official prediction of casualities would enable his feet to be held to the fire later. I like what Brad’s saying…but I want to point out that under the Constitution, Congress also has the power

to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.

So they’re NOT restricted to purse-strings and information requests. Nothing could be more repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution, whose framers envisioned nothing like the Imperial Presidency of the last sixty years, let alone Dubya. Congress has DIRECT power to determine how the armed forced are used. The President, as Commander in Chief, only has supreme EXECUTIVE power over the military (and the rest of the government as Chief Executive), not power to override Congress.

The last clause of the same section of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) gives Congress the power

to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

On what grounds, then, can a president possibly claim that his executive powers preempt the legislative authority of Congress?

Now, I grant you, given the veto power–not to mention the profound state of Constitutional confusion that shills for the imperial presidency have created in the national consciousness–it would be difficult for Congress to effectively assert the power I’m talking about. Maybe as a rider to a bill Bush desperately wants? If he signed the bill and tried to signing-statement the rider away, then there would be some chance of recourse in the courts, kangarooish though they are.

What Brad’s suggesting is probably more practical. But I think it’s still important to discuss all options. We need to keep up a discourse about what our actual rights are as Americans, and not get discouraged into letting the obfuscators with the megaphones trim them away on the grounds that “there’s nothing we can do about it.” That defeatism got us here, bit by bit, and if there’s more hope now, it’s because people have started taking destiny back into their own hands.

What a difference eleven days make. Democrats rule the Capitol, and Ford and Hussein are dead–both with far more blood on their hands than the courtiers Hamlet outwitted.

The gush-fest for Ford–though mild compared with the love-a-thon that greeted the death of the genocidal reactionary Reagan–has already engrained yet another Republican talking point into the accepted canon of beliefs of the culture zone defined by American television: he healed the nation. Never mind what Ford did to the nation of East Timor, a third of whose population was murdered in an offensive for which he supplied the weapons, illegally, and gave the go-ahead (a far less intimate involvement, to be sure, than the Reagan CIA’s direct coaching of the later slaughter in Guatemala). Ford healed “the nation”–i.e., the only one that counts within the aforementioned U.S. TV culture zone–by pardoning, against the wishes of a large majority of the American people, the criminal president who had appointed him to office on his way out the door. Thus was upheld the great American principle that, while presidents might not be quite entirely above the law, ex-presidents certainly are. The healing effect was so great that angry Americans gave Democrats two-thirds of both houses of Congress for the next two elections. Well, Ford may not have healed that part of the nation, but he certainly healed the ruling classes’ fear that the punishment might actually fit the crime.

While USTV bestows its seal of sanctity upon Ford’s death because of its Secret-Service-protected nonagenarian peacefulness, they give it to Hussein’s for the self-righteous will to kill of its perpetrators–the American System avenging itself against a former ally who committed most of his worst atrocities during their alliance. It is the ultimate climax to our Two Minutes of Hate, an act of flaming moral exuberance within the tinderbox the U.S. has made of Iraq.

ADDED JANUARY 6-> If Ford really was, apart from the pardon, one of the less divisive presidents of recent decades, it’s mostly because he was in such a weak political position–never elected, coming to office with his party under the cloud of the century, and then facing, after the first six months of his term, the aforementioned two-thirds Democratic majority. Even though the Democratic Party of that time suffered profound internal divisions (yes, far more so even than today), this hardly left Ford room to indulge in the euphoric ideological delirium that has characterized the current Occupant. Indeed, Ford is the only modern president who, having served one term or less, nearly lost his own party’s nomination (Truman, Carter, and Bush Sr. faced real opposition but in the end were renominated rather handily).

But why give such rational, structural explanations when you can reduce it all to the personal qualities of the “leaders”? USTV, after all, prides itself in the vulgar postmodernism that holds that the most superficial explanations are really the most sophisticated–and more specifically that all human affairs can be explained by endless recourse to the omnipotent PERSONAL level, from fashion to politics, which inevitably triumphs over mere institutional mandates (isn’t that why communism had to fall?).

What would be really fascinating would be to see how USTV pundits would square the rather nasty attacks Reagan and Ford hurled at each other as they battled for the 1976 nomination with the confirmed “fact” that they were both such nice guys (and such wonderful leaders that they surely didn’t deserve more than mild criticisms). Oh yes–I know–the pundits would emphasize that they later made up, with Reagan considering Ford as a possible running mate, and probably even taking him on fishing trips. Now that’s what I call HEALING.