Whatever happened to Saul Alinski?

What with everything going on today, it may strike you as strange that I'm thinking about Saul Alinski.

Remember Alinski-mania? It was all over the web about a year ago, and the madness lasted well into the summer. Satanic Saul was all that the right-wingers could talk about. As I said back in March:

What a bizarre situation! I've been chatting with lefties since the Carter administration, yet I've never run across anyone who said: "You've gotta read Rules For Radicals! Saul Alinksy is a friggin' genius!" The guy simply hasn't been on my radar, and my radar takes in a rather large amount of territory.

Yet if you wander into RightWingerLand, you'll soon see that the folks there believe that guys like me have spent the past forty years eating, drinking and breathing Alinksy. The right thinks that Alinkyism controls our every action and every utterance.

Oddly enough, if you type the name "Saul Alinsky" into Google, you'll see that only right-wing political sites make the front page. Very few people on the left care about Alinsky -- even though the reactionaries love to hallucinate otherwise.

If you repeat that experiment now, you'll find that most of the Google hits take you to material printed six or more months ago. Alinski-mania is over. The moment is gone. The blog devoted to combating the Alinski threat has not published a new story since August.

What I'm wondering is this: Was Alinski madness a real thing? I mean, the people who spread the fever -- were they sincerely worried about the murderous menace of Saul Alinski? Or did they know full well that they were playing the rubes for suckers? When right-wing bloggers worked together -- worked collectively, if you will -- to transform Saul Alinski into a scarecrow to frighten the gullible, did they do so disingenuously? Or did they really believe the shit they said?

Whenever the right fixates on a meme of this sort, I always wonder if their howlings express their legitimate feelings, or if they are simply engaging in political theater. Some of you may remember when we woke up one day last year to discover that every Breitbart-linked blogger was talking about the murderous menace of Brett Kimberlin, a former jailbird who allegedly did something bad. We were told that Brett was a leader of the left, that all liberals everywhere hung on his every word, that Brett was the boss, that we were all Crusaders for Kimberlin. And every actual liberal responded by saying: "Brett who?"

Does the right have a central planning office where they come up with these ersatz scandals? If so, the hysteria machine seems to have broken down...

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Worse than the cliff

We're facing a problem that's worse than the fiscal cliff (which we are going over): In February, Congress must raise the debt ceiling or the economy will shatter. Senator Lindsay Graham says that he will destroy the economy if he doesn't get his way on Social Security. He wants to see the retirement age raised, and he also wants chained CPI, along with some other nasty stuff.

This is blackmail, pure and simple.

Fixing Social Security is easily done: Just raise the cap. Republicans won't contemplate that approach, alas, so they are going to force through utterly unpopular "solutions." It's clear that they want any change in the retirement age to occur under a Democrat's watch.

I don't see what can stop Graham and his cohorts from accomplishing this goal.

Krugman's predictions:

So what we’re probably looking at over the next few months is an epic confrontation. Maybe Obama wimps out — in which case he’s effectively surrendered the presidency to Grover Norquist; maybe GOP leaders back down, but then face a civil war within their own party; or maybe we’ll have a vast, rolling crisis that won’t truly be resolved until the 2014 elections.

What to do? What to do?

Quite a few people (including our friends at Corrente) have flirted with the "trillion dollar coin" notion. But there are a lot of reasons to take a skeptical attitude toward that solution.

The Trillion Dollar Coin is the name given to a proposal that would enable the US Treasury to avoid the restrictions legally put in place by the congressionally mandated debt ceiling. The idea behind it is disarmingly simple: If you don't have the money, and you can't borrow it, just make it up! Rather than adhere to long-established and institutionalized procedures for issuing debt when the government's projected outlays exceed its revenues (which would increase the debt beyond the debt ceiling), it is proposed that the Treasury seize upon a legal loophole that would enable it to spend unlimited amounts of money without having to suffer the inconvenience of incurring debt.

I agree that this is a risky, drastic, downright absurd measure. But if Congress refuses to pay our debts, what are our options?

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A theory of the Batman massacre...

Bill Dash, long time friend to this blog, has a new take on the "Dark Knight Rises" theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. The words below the asterisks are his.

*  *  *

Like many out here in the cheap seats, I continue to find the Aurora massacre highly intriguing and at the same time mind-numbingly appalling.

I’ve been mulling over a possible explanation for why Holmes abruptly quit firing, withdrew to his automobile and rather than taking it on the lam, or defiantly going out guns-a-blazing, instead submitted to arrest without any resistance. Indeed, he was so accommodating he even advised the cops that he’d converted his pad into a giant explosive booby-trap. Quite a gracious concession given the considerable amount of time and effort he must have invested in rigging up the place.

I believe I have a plausible theory for why he behaved in this peculiar fashion.

Lately, I’ve begun favoring the idea that Holmes probably was not abetted by an as yet unidentified person(s). In fact, if he did not receive any tutoring, it could provide a simple, comprehensible explanation for why at the end of his rampage he suddenly seemed to wilt and slip into inaction and passivity.

My strong suspicion is that, like most people, Holmes knew little more than nothing about operating firearms when he got the insane inspiration to assemble a small arsenal in preparation for embarking on an orgy of killing. At minimum, for any beginner, receiving at least a little rudimentary training from an experienced person is really necessary. However, based on his performance during the actual massacre, either Holmes was very poorly schooled by some mysterious half-assed aegis in the weeks immediately prior, or else, in his delusional schizoid state, he grandiosely assumed he could somehow sufficiently master the operation of these three weapons all by himself, and consequently never bothered to acquire any coherent rudimentary training at all.

Given the way our culture constantly and often casually glamorizes guns in movies, on TV and in video-games, it’s not surprising that many people unthinkingly regard firearms as though they were a more dangerous form of domestic consumer appliance. But a gun is not the kind of thing where you can “just fake it till you make it” like you could if you had never used a hairdryer before.

With firearms, to operate them effectively, it’s not enough to familiarize yourself with the owner’s manual, though that’s always an excellent idea. The stuff in a manufacturer’s instruction book is only a small part of what you need to know. In the end, being able to competently operate a particular gun, especially a semi-automatic gun (as opposed to a revolver, or bolt-action rifle) has much more to do with building up a special repertoire of kinesthetic memories, so you can act smoothly, instinctively, with little self-conscious effort. I’m not referring to accuracy here, I’m simply talking about being able to correctly work the mechanism confidently i.e.: properly loading a magazine and then inserting it into the gun’s mag-well, charging the weapon, aiming and firing till lock-back (no more ammo), ejecting the empty magazine, inserting a fresh mag, charging the weapon once more, reacquiring your target and then resume firing till lock-back. Sounds simple enough. But operating any type of semi-automatic firearm has its traps and catches -- they’re known as jams.

Apparently Holmes didn’t know how to clear a jam. Anybody who understands a thing about guns will tell you that one of the inherent pitfalls of certain firearm types, especially all semi-automatic firearms, is that they have an unfortunate propensity to jam. Even when operated by a seasoned expert, the chance of a semi-auto jamming always remains a lingering possibility. However, if someone with no firearms training has loaded and is firing a semi-automatic weapon like a Glock pistol or an AR-15 rifle, then the likelihood of a jam becomes an imminent certainty. Believe it or not, just the way you grip a semi-automatic pistol can easily cause it to jam. That’s no exaggeration. Jams due to an improper grip are actually a common beginner’s mistake. The way you load ammo into the magazine can easily lead to a jam. What specific brand and type of ammo you employ can also have a big influence on jamming. Certain guns seem to prefer certain ammo. Exotic high-capacity mags like the 100 round drum-magazine Holmes had are notoriously prone to feed malfunctions, resulting in jams. Not keeping the action adequately oiled is a sure way to invite a jam. Firing a gun to the point where it becomes overheated can easily result in a jam. The list goes on…

There is a whole subset of indispensable training skills, known as “Critical Action Procedures” that have to do with emergency techniques for rapidly clearing the different kinds of jams in semi-autos. All competent shooters are at least somewhat practiced in them. But it’s a bit much to expect that a neophyte, much less a psychotic neophyte, would be able to ferret out all this information by himself and then properly apply it. It really needs to be taught. In any case, it certainly appears as though Holmes never learned these things -- thank God.

Key Question: Was Holmes wearing hearing protection while firing? This could represent an important contributing factor in understanding the course of his behavior. Without good hearing protection, the deafening racket would certainly have been terribly debilitating for a normal person. (Did you know that modern-day soldiers now wear special sound-canceling earmuffs when going into a combat-zone as part of their standard equipment? Besides greatly aiding in effective communications, it reduces fatigue and helps keep the soldier mentally and physically fresh and more alert for longer periods.) If Holmes lacked adequate hearing protection, sustained exposure to the concussive, ear-splitting roar of gunfire at such extremely high decibels, would have without question left him temporarily deaf, with his ears ringing. But even with top-notch hearing protection he still would have experienced a hurricane of intense sensory stimulation, though without tinnitus. It’s hard to imagine how all this chaos could not have failed to have a fogging effect on his or anybody’s higher brain functions.

From what I can gather, it looks to me as though each of his semi-automatic weapons jammed in succession, due to his gross lack of gun handling competence. The AR jammed so he switched to a Glock. People may ask why Holmes didn’t just stick with the 870 pump-action shotgun. It’s not semi-auto and is famous for being extremely dependable. True, but most shotguns including the 870 have to be reloaded one shell at a time and it’s quite difficult and awkward to reload them rapidly unless you have special “speed loaders” and have spent considerable time practicing how to use them without fumbling. So once the 870 was empty he understandably switched to the AR-15, till it quit on him.

My guess it that the possibility of having no functioning weapons was not something his disturbed mind ever considered, much less planned for. After all, any high quality consumer appliance is supposed to work great straight out of the box. So when the last of his guns jammed up on him, he was blindsided by the sudden, startling realization he didn’t have the faintest idea how to deal with the problem. I theorize this awareness probably hit him like a bucket of ice water, instantly robbing him of any feelings of mastery and power he may have been relishing.

Without firepower he was defanged and denuded. Whereupon, I expect, he rapidly became filled with a profound sense of helplessness and fear, and probably strong feelings of being ineffectual. It was like the rug had been pulled out from under him. I further conjecture that this abrupt narcissistic ego-puncturing, coupled with mental fatigue generated by intense sensory overstimulation, was so draining, and so crushing as to cause him to rapidly dissociate and withdraw into a passive fugue state.

This could be the explanation for why he quit firing, even though he apparently still had lots of ammunition, then retreated to his automobile (which was his little piece of home-turf) and rather than attempting to make a getaway, or commit suicide, or violently resist arrest, he simply remained there, semi-stuporous, appearing as a strangely sheepish figure when taken into custody by the police.

Finally, it is well established that adrenaline plays a critical role in the etiology of schizophrenia. God knows Holmes’ mind might have been on vacation, but his adrenaline glands must have been working overtime that night. I can’t help but wonder in what way unusually high blood-levels of adrenaline and possibly other naturally produced corticosteroids and neurochemicals may have played a part in his abrupt swing from being a rampaging executioner to being passively withdrawn and zoned out.

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The cliff, the cliff, the goddamned cliff...

I just caught a bit of Obama's press conference about the last minute fiscal cliff negotiations. He says he's "modestly optimistic." I think he's bluffing.

There is little chance of a successful compromise. Even if Reid and McConnell come to an agreement -- and I suspect that they will -- Boehner will not be able to talk his GOP House members into signing off on it. So over the cliff we go.

Right now, everyone wants to be seen trying to make a deal without actually doing a deal. I believe that the Republicans secretly want to miss the deadline. The "Grover factor" still plays a huge role here. If taxes automatically go up to Clinton-era levels, then the Republicans will be more open to negotiations in the post-cliff period -- at which point, they can tell their constituents that they never voted to raise taxes, only to lower them.

But why would Dems would want to make post-cliff concessions?

This situation reminds me of Anna Russell's once-famous comedy routine in which she explains the entire plot of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. (Her monologue doesn't seem very funny these days, although it still gives you a painless way of learning the story.) She closes her discourse by noting that the last theme of the last opera is the same primal "Rhine" music that we heard at the very beginning of the first opera.

"And so after this whole operation, we're right back where we started!"

And that, my friends, is the big bad cliff.

Going over the cliff means partying like it's 1999. We're going back -- back to the tax structure we had the last time we got the government out of the red. Except this time, Defense will be cut. And nobody touches Social Security.

From a liberal perspective, is that outcome such a bad thing?

The Republicans brought this situation on themselves back in 2009-2011, when they whipped the country into a frenzy over the debt. Remember those commercials in which the little girl confronts a guy digging a huge hole and pleads with him to stop shoveling? They don't run those spots any more.

The only game left is the blame game -- hence all of the current posturing.

Ezra Klein, in a very good WP piece (which boasts some excellent graphics), addresses that point. Klein argues that the Republicans, not the Democrats, have been intransigent. He's right, of course -- Obama has shown willingness to cut into Social Security, fer chrissakes. The important thing now is to make the Republicans pay the price for being obstinate.

The check on that sort of behavior is blame. If Republicans are being intransigent and the American people want compromise, then, in theory, the Republicans will get blamed. And that does seem to be happening: The GOP polls terribly, and they lost the 2012 election.

But at the elite level — which encompasses everyone from CEOs to media professionals — there’s a desire to keep up good relations on both sides of the aisle. And so it’s safer, when things are going wrong, to offer an anodyne criticism that offends nobody — “both sides should come together!” — then to actually blame one side or the other. It’s a way to be angry about Washington’s failure without alienating anyone powerful. That goes doubly for commercial actors, like Starbucks, that need to sell coffee to both Republicans and Democrats.

That breaks the system. It hurts the basic mechanism of accountability, which is the public’s ability to apportion blame. If one side’s intransigence will lead to both sides getting blamed, then it makes perfect sense to be intransigent: You’ll get all the benefits and only half the blame.

Unfortunately, this is not an election year, so Boehner's unruly crew won't be in immediate danger even if they do get the blame. Obama and the Democrats, on the other hand, will feel plenty of heat if the economy heads downward again over the next two years.

So, like, there's that.

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Was there a second shooter?

When the Newtown elementary school shooting occurred, we noted a flurry of articles -- such as this CBS report -- indicating a second shooter.

A witness tells WFSB-TV that a second man was taken out of the woods in handcuffs wearing a black jacket and camouflage pants and telling parents on the scene, “I did not do it.”

At the time, I said:

I'm sure that there will be soon be a reasonable explanation for this incident. But let's not allow the report of a second gunman slide away without explanation.

On the For the Record site, a writer known only as Pterrafractal has done a fine job of covering what we know about this odd aspect of the tragedy: Here's part 1, part 2, and part 3.

It turns out that the initial reports of a second shooter came from a teacher in the building. This information was captured by someone with a scanner monitoring police radio transmissions; the recording was later uploaded to YouTube.

One dispatcher notifies responding officers that a teacher reported seeing “two shooters, running past the gym.”

When the police showed up, they detained the man wearing camo pants, as reported by CBS. He had been seen leaving the school when the shooting stopped. In an article debunking conspiracy theories, the Atlantic suggested that Camo Pants Man was the parent of a Sandy Hook student:

We admit it took a bit of digging to discover that others had figured out that the man in question was most likely Chris Manfredonia, the father of a Sandy Hook student, who attempted to sneak into the school after the shooting started. Police can be heard relaying his name over their radios, but few outlets managed to follow up with that detail.

We learn more about him here:

Chris Manfredonia, whose 6-year-old daughter attends the school, was heading there Friday morning to help make gingerbread houses with first-graders when he heard popping sounds and smelled sulfur.

He ran around the school trying to reach his daughter and was briefly handcuffed by police. He later found his child, who had been locked in a small room with a teacher.

Would a suburban father wear camo pants? Possibly -- especially if he is a hunter. But the Manfredonia identification cannot explain the initial report from inside the building, which spoke of two shooters running past the gym. By the time Manfredonia entered the school, the shooting may have been already over. We can be certain that he was never in close proximity to Adam Lanza.

Here's where things get strange. Remember when we said that someone with a scanner recorded the police broadcasts during the event?

Another con­fus­ing detail that sug­gest there was a dif­fer­ent man appre­hended is the fact that, on the same police scan­ner record­ing at ~30:25, an offi­cer reports that he has a possi­ble sus­pect vehi­cle and lists off the license plate. The name of the man is Christopher A. Rodia (he spells out R O D I A, and says he was born in August 1969) and there is, indeed, a Christo­pher A. Rodia in CT...

This Rodia fellow had been arrested in July for stealing from a construction site.

Coincidence could easily explain Rodia's presence in the general vicinity. But on that very same scanner recording, we hear the cops read off the license plate number of the car: 872 YEO

This car is not registered to Rodia. It belonged to Adam Lanza. Here's a picture of Lanza's car being hauled away after the shooting:

So...do we have a genuine mystery?

Well...maybe not.

In part 3, Pterrafractal writes that the Rodia affair has been cleared up. He listened again to the scanner recording, this time paying very careful attention to the voices. The voice identifying license plate 872 YEO differs from the voice calling in a report on Rodia.

So at this point the only evi­dence regard­ing Mr. Rodia is the fact that he was appar­ently speed­ing some­where within the range of the indi­vid­ual that was record­ing the radio scans and got pulled over. The list­ing of his name and date of birth was coin­ci­den­tally done 20 sec­onds after an offi­cer reads the “872 YEO” plate num­ber on the shooter’s vehi­cle. That’s it.

Rodia appears to be innocent, at least in regard to the school shooting.

As for the guy in the camo pants: He was probably Manfredonia.

So we really have no evidence of a second shooter except for that initial report of two gunmen running past the gym. We don't know who made that observation, or under what circumstances the sighting was made. (Please don't give us the standard lecture on the reliability of witness testimony during fast-moving events: We all know the drill already.)

One aspect of this situation continues to disturb me: The pattern.

Dismissing the "second shooter" evidence in the Newtown tragedy is pretty easy to do, since the evidence doesn't really amount to much. I'm troubled by the fact that we hear such stories nearly every time a mass shooting takes place. In the case of the "Batman" massacre in Colorado, we have one very credible eyewitness who speaks of multiple shooters. On the other hand, if there truly were multiple killers in that theater, one would expect many more witnesses to make statements to that effect.

Added note: In previous posts, we talked about the widely-republished stories which held that the fathers of Adam Lanza (the Sandy Hook killer) and James Holmes (the Batman killer) were both scheduled to testify before Congressional committees looking into the LIBOR scandal. Those reports have been debunked.

“This rumor is 100% false,” a Senate Banking Committee aide, who asked not to be named, told TPM by email. “The Senate Banking Committee does not have any LIBOR hearings currently scheduled, and has never considered either of these men as potential witnesses.”

The false claim seems to have originated with a libertarian blogger who bears the unlikely name Fabian4Liberty.

What is it about libertarians? They have become the most outrageous hoax-mongers on the internet. The whole "controlled demolition" thesis of 9/11 began with irresponsible early posts by three self-proclaimed libertarians: David Rostcheck, Peter Meyer and Jared Israel. The most prominent current proponent of this idea is Alex Jones, yet another libertarian and proud resident of CloudCuckooLand.

Let's not even begin to talk about the Ron Paulies.

I guess if you're the sort of person who can convince yourself that Ayn Rand was a deep thinker, you must have a phobic reaction to reality.

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Variously: Suing infiltrators, FBI vs. Occupy, ANOTHER News Corp scandal, and more "cliff" notes

David Gregory: Why is it so hard for me to care? Yet this is the Big Thing that everyone is now supposed to be yapping about. So the guy showed a gun magazine on camera. Big deal.

Yet another News Corp scandal: This one is new to me. Murdoch's baby is being sued by -- get this -- the folks who make Dial soap. It's all about those coupons that come spilling out of your daily newspaper, especially on Sunday.

Bet you never thought much about how all that stuff got in there, did you? There are only a few firms handling such promotions, and they also handle in-store promotions. The coupons are damned near the only thing keeping some newspapers afloat these days. According to the suit, News Corp used underhanded tactics -- including hacking into competitors' servers -- to get exclusive contracts from advertisers.

The lengthy complaint begins: "In two distinct relevant markets the multifaceted and pervasive exclusionary strategies of defendants ('News') over twenty years have violated the antitrust laws of the United States. News has suppressed competitive promotion of a massive number of consumer goods in forty thousand retail stores, and scores of newspapers nationwide, to acquire and maintain two unlawful monopolies and earn large monopoly profits at the expense of its purchasers.

"Its unlawful purposes could not be more transparent. For example, in a sales meeting Paul Carlucci, then News America Inc.'s Chief Operating Officer, Paul Carlucci, illustrated News' desire for the ultimate in competitive suppression with a video from 'The Untouchables,' in which Al Capone serves as a sales role model as he cudgels a competitive enemy to death with a baseball bat. Mr. Carlucci has been equally blunt with the press as to News' exclusionary purposes, vowing to 'destroy' his competitors as a 'man who has to have it all.'

When you combine this lawsuit with what I consider the greatest of the Murdoch scandals -- destroying competitors in the world of Pay TV by distributing illegal hacked smart cards -- it really does seem as though News Corp is little more than a massive criminal enterprise. Where does Murdoch find these sociopaths who work for him?

Ruth Marcus, in the Washington Post, extolls the benefits of Chained CPI. That's the plan to make Social Security checks smaller. Ruth asks: "Why not squeeze another $220 billion out of Granny? She's being paid too much as it is!"

Foreclosing on banks: Here's an interesting tale of role reversal. When a bank forecloses on a home or condo, it becomes responsible for all of the homeowner's association fees. The banks simply haven't paid, so now the associations are putting leins on properties owned by the banks.

The cliff: Count me among those who predict (cautiously) that there will be no deal. Over we go!

This is one of those stories where polls count for a lot. Right now, Obama has the polls on his side:

Despite the growing pessimism, Americans also increasingly approve of how some political leaders are handling negotiations. Approval of Obama’s approach to the cliff has jumped from 48 percent to 54 percent, the approval for Democratic leaders in Congress has spiked from 34 percent to 45 percent, and even Boehner — whose inability to pass the so-called “Plan B” was considered a major setback — saw his approval tick up a single point, to 26 percent. The approval for Republican leaders in Congress dropped 3 points to 26 percent.

Other polls have consistently shown Republicans receiving most of the blame if the country falls off the fiscal cliff.

Those polls could shift. But Obama may have prevented such a shift by hoisting the "Chained CPI" flag. I despise the idea of reducing benefits, but I can see how, from a strategic standpoint, Obama might have aided his bargaining position by telling the nation that he is willing to compromise on basic principles.

Now that the Republicans have rejected even their own ludicrous Plan B, everyone sees that Obama is willing to screw over his base while the Republicans aren't willing to budge even one eighth of an inch. Since the public has come to favor compromise over ideological inflexibility, things look good for Obama and bad for the GOP.

Can spies be sued? From Earth First to Occupy Wall Street to Crazy Carl's Conspiracy Club, lots of organizations worry about government infiltrators. Now a court has ruled that the spooks can be sued.

A federal appeals court involving antiwar activists who were secretly infiltrated by US military spies has ruled in favor of the activists, marking the first time a court has endorsed the people’s ability to sue the military for violating their First and Fourth Amendment rights.

“Declassified documents obtained by Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance,”reports Democracy Now, “revealed a man everyone knew as ‘John Jacob’ was in fact John Towery,” who was assigned by the government to spy on the Washington state-based antiwar groups.

Towery was dispatched from a “fusion center,” or intelligence center, as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s post-9/11 anti-terrorism surveillance powers.

In October, the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee reviewed more than 600 reports that had come out of these so-called fusion centers and found the giant bureaucracy surrounding the program produced almost nothing that had to do with countering terrorist threats.

Instead, the government spy networks snooped on political activists and infiltrated groups that were peacefully exercising their constitutional rights to free speech.

Yes! The DoD and Homeland Security have no damned business spooking around the war protesters.

There have been a number of articles about Towery over the past few years: See here and here. He exemplifies a point I've tried to explain to political paranoids for decades now: The infiltrator is never the guy who pisses you off by telling you that your inane little theories are all wet. He's the ingratiating guy who always says: "Yup, that's right. You're a freakin' genius, amigo." There's even a "Who is John Towery?" website, no longer updated.

Much of his time was spent befriending anarchists or those whose views had anarchist characteristics. People who knew John Jacob described him as kind, generous, and friendly. He came to meetings and quickly became a trusted individual, leading to him becoming the administrator of the PMR mailing list which gave him access to the name and email address of almost every person in the organization. The information he collected was given to and used by various government bodies including The US Army, The Olympia Police Department, the Tacoma Police Department, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Washington State Patrol, and the Washington Joint Analytical Center. After his outing, he admitted to spying on these groups and passing on information to these agencies. This information collection on US citizens and groups engaged in 1st Amendment protected activities was clearly illegal under a number of statues and violated the rights and civil liberties of those involved.

Why was this spying illegal?

Under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, it is illegal for the US Army or other military forces to collect information on US Civillians. Furthermore, had John worked for another agency, such as the Olympia Police Department or the FBI it would have been illegal to do what he had done. Groups such as Students for a Democratic Society and Olympia Port Militarization Resistance are engaged in 1st Amendment protected activity and various state and federal laws including the constitution prevent surveillance and disruption of such groups. Furthermore, since various agencies acted on information that they should have reasonably known were obtained illegally, they were also in violation of the law.

I can understand infiltration of groups that have demonstrated a potential for violence, but there's no reason to harass peaceniks.

On a very related note, here's Marcy Wheeler on new evidence of FBI surveillance of Occupy Wall Street.

Even the first pages of the actual documents show how FBI repeatedly acknowledged that Occupy “does not openly condone the use of violence.” But then it notes that Occupy trained for civil disobedience and its response, and from that the FBI concludes “that violence and/or illegal activity is expected by event organizers.” The FBI ascribes the violence that organizers correctly expected from cops to the organizers themselves, and used the intent to engage in civil disobedience as the means to use First Amendment activity as a predicate for investigation.

The FBI also claims that an Occupy-affiliated web site advocated the use of billy clubs and tasers. Oh really? If any Occupy-friendly site had ever made such a suggestion, the Breitbart crew would have screamed until their throats bled.

So where did the FBI get that nutty idea? They won't say. They redacted their own damned footnotes!

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White Christmas, crazy Christmas

Being a California lad, I've not had many white Christmases. But the first snow of the season fell today in Baltimore, and the town looks remarkably picturesque. Hope all is lovely where you are.

Check in later on -- I may post something freaky about Jesus. 'Tis the season.

For now, check out Mark McKinnon's Xmas wish: "All I want for Christmas is a new GOP."

All sanity seems to have left the ranks of those in charge of the GOP—or, more accurately, those who want to be in charge. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) demonstrated in a jaw-dropping performance Thursday on Morning Joe the depth of the problem and why we are bound to go over the fiscal cliff. He made it clear he won’t vote for a tax increase on anyone, no matter how much they make. So, by his logic, we will end up going over the cliff, and raise taxes on everybody, because he and too many others like him in the party are unwilling to raise taxes on anyone.

Yeah, but what if I want taxes to return to the Clintonian rates? What if I want military spending reduced? Maybe liberals should ask Santa to do what he can to keep the GOP just as crazy as it is.

And so, we have a Republican Party today willing to eliminate any prospect for a decent future for anyone, including itself, if it cannot be a future that is 100 percent in accordance with its core beliefs and principles. That’s not governing. That’s just lobbing hand grenades.

Consult the book of Armaments, Brother Maynard.

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Leningrad

This blog often posts non-political material on the weekend, although I don't think I've ever published a non-political piece by someone else. As it happens, I've long wanted to write about one of my favorite pieces of 20th century music -- Dimitri Shostakovich's Symphony 7, the "Leningrad" symphony, his musical reaction to the Nazi invasion of the USSR. A few weeks ago, Bill Dash sent me an article on that very work.

Don't go away. I know many of you don't like the classics, but this work has one hell of a story behind it -- a story that put Shostakovich on the cover of Time Magazine. No other work of art -- not even the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel -- has such an astounding backstory.

Anyone who talks about the Seventh inevitably focuses on the first movement, specifically on THAT theme -- the Nazis-on-the-march tune. (It starts at about 5:35 in the YouTube video embedded above.) Weirdly enough, the melody is jaunty and fun at first. On further iterations, it becomes menacing, violent, overwhelming, cosmic, apocalyptic. This movement is like Bolero, except it's about Nazis. (Compare to Kilar's Exodus, which is like Bolero except it's about Jews.) THAT theme haunted Shostakovich all his life -- he sounds it again at the very end of his final symphony, the Fifteenth (which is magnificent in its own right).

If you want to give the Seventh a try, please play a recording of it at the appropriate volume. If you don't get an eviction notice, you aren't playing it loud enough. There should be blood trickling out of your ears.

In 1979, the CIA released an obvious work of propaganda -- an alleged Shostakovich autobiography. The original MS is "unavailable," natch. According to this book, Shostakovich was a lifelong dissident and everything he wrote contains covert critiques of godless Bolshevism -- even the wartime Seventh, which should be interpreted as a criticism of Stalin, not Hitler. Now, I have no doubt that Shostakovich detested Stalin, and for damned good reason. But the true meaning of the Seventh is clear to anyone with ears, and the bullshit about that symphony printed in Testimony is all the evidence we need to prove that the book is, at least in part, a typical cold war fake.

I'll let Bill tell the rest of the story...

*  *  *

Every so often I get a yen to listen to Shostakovich’s Symphony number 7 in C major , opus 60, known more popularly as The Leningrad Symphony, or just “The Leningrad”. It centers my spirits

Critically, the Seventh tends often to be given short shrift. Not surprisingly those on the far right loathe it, I suspect as much out of jealousy as because of its being a product of Communism. Fascism has never brought forth anything that even vaguely comes close to being its equal. But across the political spectrum, from right to left, the Leningrad frequently receives low marks. Highbrow snoots, dilettantes, the terminally chic, and the squeamishly genteel regard it with disdain for being overly marshal, as well as melodramatic and mawkish. Legitimate complaints, if true. But are they?

Personally, I think it’s a bum rap. True, there’s no mistaking the fact that “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn” it definitely is not. And yes, it has a something of a theatrical film-score quality, which to my ear is hardly a liability considering the Seventh is easily in the league of the great Hollywood cinematic composers like Bernard Herman, Miklos Rosas, Franz Waxman, and Wolfgang Korngold. (Shostakovich was an avid cinema watcher and an admirer of film-scores) There’s no denying, too, that the Leningrad is on the long side and probably might have benefited from some editing. Overall though, it seems to me that objections to the Seventh, more often than not, are based mainly on musical prejudice and political snobbery.

For those unsettled by its raw pathos, its recurring passages of driving, machinelike energy, and its skillful, almost operatic use of melodramatic themes, then something that can make the piece more accessible, providing there is an open-minded willingness to allow one’s horizons to expand, is to hear the way the Seventh Symphony bears a striking similarity to the graphic art of Social-Realism from the 1920s and ‘30s. However corrupt the cause it championed, Soviet Social-Realism occasionally produced, along with a hellava lot of dross, some very powerful images.

But even at its best, Social-Realism is still propaganda. Shostakovich ingeniously subverted and adapted key aspects of Social-Realism into a musical form that he could use, not to perpetuate the drone of Marxist-Leninist dogma, but instead to present the inspiring saga of Leningrad’s remarkable history of flourishing despite the crushing tyranny of the Czars, followed by the soulless rule of Bolshevism, and later still under the bitter scourge of the Fascist invaders -- and here’s the key – to accomplish all this without provoking Stalin, or any of his henchmen.

Desperate to contend with the chaos triggered by the devastating German blitzkrieg, the Kremlin was forced to invoke a temporary loosening of its otherwise draconian censorship restrictions. Shostakovich brilliantly exploited this situation. Holed up within besieged Leningrad, inside what turned out to be one of history’s most gruesome deathtraps, with the very real possibility of his own death staring him in the face, he felt, oddly enough, liberated and emboldened. Ignoring party directives, he framed his composition not for the more fastidious ears of the communist intelligentsia (as were his standing instructions from the Ministry of Culture) but rather created what he knew might be his last symphony to resonate deeply with the workers and common people and indeed anyone who possessed an ounce of authentic patriotic ardor.

I would never maintain that works of art automatically require an understanding of their historical context in order to be enjoyed. On the contrary, the very greatest works are characterized by an astonishing ability to strike immediate and powerful connections many centuries, or even millennia after their period of creation. But some art definitely is more tethered to an historical context, and can be undervalued if the circumstances out of which it arose go unappreciated.

I believe the Leningrad Symphony is such a case. When one takes into account, without critical prejudice, the extraordinary circumstances that brought forth the Seventh, then its boldly unashamed emotionality, its exuberant will to embrace life despite all the onerous travails, and its grim do-or-die resolve to pay the terrible cost not to succumb to barbarism, begin making a great deal more sense musically.

How Shostakovich actually came to compose the Leningrad is quite an amazing story.

It was summer 1941, the darkest days of WWII. The historic and architecturally magnificent city of Saint Petersburg, ensconced on the eastern shores of the Baltic, known as the Venice of the North, cradle of the Revolution, and re-christened Leningrad by the Communists, was one of Russia’s greatest cultural and industrial centers. It was also a military objective of immense strategic importance for Hitler and his Nazi cutthroats as they unleashed a massive surprise attack on their totally unsuspecting Russian ally.

The ferocity, suddenness, and colossal scale of the German onslaught hit the hapless Soviets like a storm of shattering hammer blows. In less than a week’s time, well over half a million Russian soldiers had been wiped off the face of the earth, along with hundreds of planes, tanks, artillery pieces, trucks and mountains of ammunition and support equipment. Those Red Army units not annihilated or shipped back to Germany as slave labor, were in a stumbling retreat, mangled and exhausted. It was a calamitous rout. Leningrad soon was surrounded and expecting at any moment the coup-de-grace from Hitler’s seemingly invincible forces.

However, a full scale attack on the city failed to materialize. Reluctant to expend large numbers of badly needed troops to storm the sprawling metropolis by direct assault, Hitler ordered instead that Leningrad be blockaded and starved into submission. Faithful to their master, the German beasts held the Venice of the North under merciless siege for some 872 days.

A merciless beast in his own right, Stalin, in anticipation of the rapidly advancing panzer divisions, initially authorized an emergency evacuation of Leningrad’s civilians. Only a few train loads of women and children had departed Leningrad when he suddenly contravened his own orders and denied the city’s population further permission to flee. Stalin had ruthlessly calculated that Red Army troops would fight that much harder for a city which was still inhabited. “Not One Step Back!” became the official motto. Thousands of Leningrad’s citizens were pressed into service constructing barricades and digging revetments and anti-tank traps. Anyone, civilian and soldier alike, caught evading his duty, much less attempting to escape from Leningrad, was to be immediately shot – and more than a few were.

Once cut off and isolated by the Germans from all regular sources of resupply, with virtually no electricity or fuel, with practically no food or fresh water, and bereft of all but the most primitive of medical supplies, it was only a matter of weeks before conditions in the great city became appalling. As the weeks turned into months, life in Leningrad steadily degenerated into a living nightmare. The full scale of human suffering defies description. People commonly were driven to suicide, and many openly engaged in cannibalism. Each day hundreds of Leningraders, sometimes little better than walking skeletons, perished in unspeakable misery. Every week brought several thousand more deaths. Corpses piled up in the streets. It was medieval.

Mass starvation was the number one life-taker, but rampant epidemics of typhus and dysentery also claimed vast numbers of victims, along with those unlucky enough to be caught in the incessant German air-raids and artillery barrages. During the howling subzero winter months, countless others, severely malnourished, languishing in unheated flats, simply froze to death. Yet despite all these god-awful horrors, the will to resist could not be extinguished and the city miraculously clung to life for over 2 ½ agonizing years. When liberation eventually came, the final civilian death toll amounted to well over one million men, women and children.

Trapped there too was Shostakovich, in the city which had been his beloved home since birth. Enraged by the Germans' treachery, and shocked by the pitiless ease with which they committed atrocities as a routine matter, like their practice of pillaging Russian towns, butchering some civilians and leaving the rest to starve. Shostakovich wasted no time getting to a recruitment center and applying for enlistment. But he was rejected, ostensibly due to his extremely poor eyesight and rather frail physical constitution.

Not to be deterred, he opted for joining one of the local volunteer fire-brigades. But in reality the Kremlin could never allow him to become cannon fodder. He was regarded as too important a national asset. Indeed, Moscow fearful he might be killed, or even worse, captured, informed him that special arrangements had been made to have him spirited out of Leningrad and that he was to leave at once. But Shostakovich refused. He would not leave.

At any other time such brazen disobedience would have landed him in a Siberian prison camp, if not in front of a firing squad. Shostakovich was hardly an ardent communist, nor was he an heroic fool. Rather, his determination to stay grew out of his love of mother Russia and his deep sense of moral honor which would not allow him to abandon his lifelong home and his neighbors and countrymen now in their most desperate hour, perhaps their final one. The Germans seemed unstoppable, having already smashed and slaughtered their way across vast stretches of the Russian heartland. The prospects for preventing a Nazi victory looked bleak. But defeat was unthinkable as it would surely mean the fulfillment of Hitler’s vision: the enslavement and mass extermination of the Russian people.

So in the midst of the largest, deadliest, most horrific siege in the sorry annals of human warfare, Shostakovich marshaled his extraordinary musical talents and directed them towards the cause of victory, pouring his energies into composing a tribute to the city that nurtured his talent and a paean to Leningrad’s indomitable courage not just now in the face of the brutal German siege, but historically under the cruel legacy of many despotic regimes. It was to be a composition that would be a rallying call to all the Russian people. Energized with inspiration, its creation nevertheless required weeks of grim focus, every day of which the encircling Germans continued punishing the once enchanting Venice of the North with shellings and air-raids, ever tightening their murderous stranglehold.

When the symphony was completed, confident he had captured something powerful, Shostakovich at last relented and agreed to escape so that he might personally oversee a performance for the Kremlin. Upon hearing “The Leningrad Symphony”, as Shostakovich had nicknamed it, Stalin was exceedingly pleased and decreed that it be played constantly on the state radio, and that live performances be immediately arranged in towns and military bases across the USSR.

The score was smuggled to the West on microfilm, where performances met with equally enthusiastic acclaim, instantly connecting with audiences in Britain, the US and Canada. It made its North American premiere in New York City as a major national live radio performance conducted by the great Toscanini. (Although, ironically, Shostakovich hated Toscanini’s interpretation.) Countless other radio broadcasts ensued. Virtually overnight, “The Leningrad” became an inspirational theme of hope and a call for united defiance at a critical time when the rampaging might of Fascism appeared on the verge of conquering all of Europe, Asia, Northern Africa, and the western Pacific.

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"Brainwashing" and the Batman massacre

James Holmes, the joker in Colorado who shot into a crowd of people watching the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, now claims that he has been "brainwashed" by his therapist. At least, that's what a fellow who was in prison with Holmes says that Holmes says.

The prisoner is one Steven Unruh. His story has been questioned...

Jail officials say there's no way that Unruh could have had that kind of access. Yet certain elements of the story -- which includes a description that resembles the headbanging routine that sent Holmes to the hospital last week -- have been attracting attention from law enforcement and even families of the shooting victims.

"They're going to try to discredit my story," Unruh told Westword in a recent interview at the jail. "But I was able to have a four-hour talk with him. I talked him out of suicide."

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the tale presented by Unruh, a 38-year-old inmate with a long history of drug and theft charges. To begin with, his account of what Holmes supposedly told him is as bizarre as a William S. Burroughs fever dream. Also, Unruh just got out of prison last January after serving six years for methamphetamine and credit-card fraud convictions, and he says he's been diagnosed as having a bipolar condition.

"It's always been meth with me," he says. "If I drink a beer or something, I've got the voices in my head that drive me to do more drugs. I'm really weak-minded."

Okay, so Unruh isn't the best source one could ask for. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Holmes really did make such an assertion. But even if we posit that he did, that does not mean we should take the idea seriously.

There is a small, strange subculture of schizophrenics and troubled attention-seekers who believe themselves to be victims of mind control. Over the years, various people making such claims have tried to initiate legal cases against their therapists and other authority figures (such as the head of the CIA). These cases have always lacked any evidence beyond the word of the plaintiff, and thus have always been always tossed out with prejudice. The claimed "victims" would then pass around copies of the unfavorable court rulings within the community of alleged brainwashees. Soon, other "victims" would regard these official court documents as proof that the mind control conspiracy is real...!

(Before we continue, let me issue a warning to those of you who think you can take me to school on MKULTRA and allied projects: Don't.)

Let's get back to the issue of Unruh's credibility:

Lieutenant J.D. Knight, who directly supervises booking operations, agrees. "It would be virtually impossible for Mr. Unruh to have any of the communications he has stated," he says.

But Unruh insists the sporadic conversation continued even after Holmes was moved to another cell in the area. He says that Holmes told him "he felt like he was in a video game" during the shooting, that "he wasn't on his meds" and "nobody would help him." He says Holmes also mentioned NLP -- presumably, neuro-linguistic programming, a much-scorned and outmoded approach to psychotherapy -- and claimed to have been "programmed" to kill by an evil therapist.

"When he got out to his car, he wasn't programmed no more," Unruh says. "It sounded kind of crazy. He was trying to run it by me, basically."

Unruh has a phone number that he says Holmes asked him to call. (The number connects to the cell phone of a bereavement counselor, who says she has no acquaintance with Holmes or Unruh.) He has a form that indicates James Holmes tried to send him a letter, but it was rejected by jail authorities. (Knight says he has no record of any letter sent by Holmes to Unruh, intercepted or otherwise.) He claims to have received messages from Holmes via other inmates since that night, but he admits he doesn't know if the sender was actually Holmes.

Still, Unruh's story seems to have drawn interest in one unlikely quarter. He says Holmes told him he "walked up and down the aisles" of the theater three times before he opened fire, and that detail, if true, might have some bearing on the pending litigation by victims' families against the theater chain.

Nothing I've seen so far indicates that Unruh had gained knowledge of facts that could not be gleaned from news accounts. The allegation that Holmes walked up and down the aisles three times does not ring true.

Conspiracy researchers have -- justifiably -- paid a great deal of attention to witness Corbin Dates, who has indicated the presence of more than one shooter. Dates (who seems quite credible in interviews) said that the gunman began his attack "instantly" after entering the theater.

Sorry, conspiracy fans. You can believe Dates or you can believe Unruh. But you can't have both, because they contradict each other and cannot be reconciled.

It's worth noting that Unruh gives us a "lone gunman" scenario.

Although some websites have said some very paranoid things about neuro-linguistic programming, I consider the whole idea of using NLP to program a mass murderer to be absurd. NLP is -- perhaps I should say was -- a therapeutic fad that has been largely discredited. From Wikipedia:

Criticisms go beyond the lack of empirical evidence for effectiveness; critics say that NLP exhibits pseudoscientific characteristics,[14] title,[3] concepts and terminology.[6][15] NLP is used as an example of pseudoscience for facilitating the teaching of scientific literacy at the professional and university level.[7][16][17] NLP also appears on peer reviewed expert-consensus based lists of discredited interventions.[5] In research designed to identify the "quack factor" in modern mental health practice, Norcross et al. (2006) [15] list NLP as possibly or probably discredited for treatment of behavioural problems.

Even proponents of this approach have always characterized its effects as both subtle and therapeutic. It has been used (to dubious effect) in the treatment of addiction, PTSD and depression. No advocate of NLP has ever claimed that it could be used to force someone to act against his own moral code, to induce an artificial case of Dissociative Identity Disorder, or to commit acts of violence. NLP is, in short, not a way to turn a normal person into a programmed murderer.

Even if Unruh is speaking truthfully, the tale he tells is nonsense.

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The unhinged

Westboro Baptist Church members, ever seeking new ways to prove their vileness, has been barred from protesting the funerals of the children shot in Connecticut. (Church members believe that homosexuality creates school shootings. They also seem to think that making themselves universally detested will somehow cause gays to go away.) Hackers have now targeted this detestable group.

The Twitter accounts of two prominent members of the hate-mongering group were apparently infiltrated this week by members of the infamous hacker collective UG Nazi.

On Monday, Wired.com confirmed that 15-year-old whiz kid "Cosmo the God," a prolific member of the UG Nazi "hacktivist" group, had successfully carried out a takeover of @DearShirley, the Twitter account opened by WBC spokeswoman Shirley Lynn Phelps-Roper.

I don't approve of cyber-attacks of this sort, but in this case, I can't work up much outrage. Even Black Lotus, a web security firm hired by the Church, has decided to donate the money they've received to charity.

But the Westboro Baptist Church is simply one symptom of a larger problem. Although I doubt that this sect considers electoral politics to be of much value, there are still millions of fundamentalist voters out there, and Fox News continually fuels their paranoia. Even though a recent NYT story says that their influence is waning, their intolerant, inflexible stances continue to deform our democracy. Note, for example, the tale of this chronic Fox News watcher who felt inspired to burn a mosque on the theory that all Muslims seek to kill Americans.

We shouldn't neglect the allied problem of Ayn Randism, an irrational belief system which tends to attract fallen evangelicals. Objectivism, like fundamentalism, is a cult -- and, as we all know, those who escape one cult often get suckered in by a rival sect. The Ron Paul forums demonstrate that Randroids and Jesus voters share an addiction to absurd conspiracy theories. The two strains are as alike as makes no difference when it comes to economic philosophy.

Both the Christian conservatives and the Libertarians are determined to undermine the very idea of government, just as they both deride any scientific data which does not conform to their biases. Although Ronald Reagan was willing to countenance tax raises to combat a recession, modern conservatives scream like banshees at the prospect.

Andrew Sullivan -- not my favorite pundit in the world -- has published a righteous rant that has many people talking:

But the current constitutional and economic vandalism removes any shred of doubt that this party and its lucrative media bubble is in any way conservative. They aren't. They're ideological zealots, indifferent to the consequences of their actions, contemptuous of the very to-and-fro essential for the American system to work, gerry-mandering to thwart the popular will, filibustering in a way that all but wrecks the core mechanics of American democracy, and now willing to acquiesce to the biggest tax increase imaginable because they cannot even accept Obama's compromise from his clear campaign promise to raise rates for those earning over $250,000 to $400,000 a year.

And this is not the exception. It is the rule. On abortion, the party proposes that it be made illegal in every state by amending the Constitution. Torture? More, please. Iran? It should be attacked if it merely develops the technological skill to make a nuclear bomb, let alone actually make one. Israel? Leading Republicans don't just support new settlements on the West Bank. They show up for the opening ceremonies!

Gun control? A massacre of children leads to a proposal for more guns in elementary schools and no concession on assault weapons. Immigration? Romney represented the party base - favoring a brutal regime of persecution of illegal immigrants until they are forced to "self-deport" - or rounding as many up as they can. Climate change? It's a hoax - and we should respond by shrieking "Drill, Baby, Drill!" Gay marriage? The federal constitution should be amended to bar any legal recognition of any gay relationships, including civil partnerships. Their legislative agenda in this Congress? To "make Obama a one-term president." Not saving the economy, not pursuing new policies, not cooperating to make Democratic legislation better. Just destroying a president of the opposite party. And, of course, failing.

Then there is the rhetoric. In just the last fortnight, House Republicans have asserted that secretary of state Clinton faked her recent fall and concussion at home in order to get out of testifying on the Benghazi consulate attack. And then the Weekly Standard quotes a Senate Republican staffer saying: "Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite."

Enough. This faction and its unhinged fanaticism has no place in any advanced democracy. They must be broken.

Fellow blogger Dakinikat offers an interesting account of her own encounters with the wacky side of the American body politic. She once ran for office as a Republican:

The position of Senator of the Nebraska state unicameral is nonpartisan which is how I got marginally beat by a combination of Michelle Bachmann/Sarah Palin whacko that had lived in the state less than a year and ran one the nastiest campaigns in the state’s history that was primarily fought from church and parish pulpits. She was brought in by the fetus fetishists who were in full on purge mode by the early 1990s. Nearly every elected official I spoke to was not very big on them but feared them and said they agreed with them just to make their re-elections easier. Having two catholic parishes, two big barn evangelical churches and some Southern Baptists run a religious witch hunt on you is absolutely traumatizing. It’s worse than dealing with the Taliban because at least the Taliban wear beards and are easy to identify. No one wants to believe they have a whacko living next to them in a suburb and that’s the hardest thing to fight about them. They used to use code words and the tried to fit in. They looked normal. After 20 years of plotting take overs and purges in state after state with no one really taking them very seriously we arrive at the position we are in today. They’ve broken their strings and no longer serve plutocrats that empowered them. We have a democracy that is a duopoly of two parties. One of our parties has gone insane. The result is complete dysfunction.

It’s not like the establishment republicans don’t deserve this. They really let it happen. They laughed at their crazies and gave them just enough lip service that they thought they’d keep them in their little corners.

The House Republicans are fixing to cook Boehner's goose because the insanely conservative non-starter fiscal cliff proposal he offered wasn't insane enough. One would suppose that the GOP's recent rout in a very winnable election year should have taught the hard right-wingers the value of moderation. Instead, Republican hard liners have -- as predicted -- drawn the wrong conclusion from Obama's victory:

“The stars are all aligning the wrong way in terms of working together,” said Peter Wehner, a former top White House aide to President George W. Bush. “Right now, the political system is not up to the moment and the challenges that we face.”

Never let anyone tell you that we don't have a two party system. The difference between the two parties is, in fact, quite profound: One party is too conservative and corruptible, while the other is insane.

Let us have the wisdom to choose wisely.

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Live-blogging Doomsday

Keep checking in!

9:55: It's rather cold outside. Winter has been temperate until this day. I think the sudden onset of bad weather may be a sign of the end.

Also, I found a pair of high-quality Italian brown dress shoes in a thrift store for the strange and unnatural price of two dollars. I may go back there to buy the black monk strap shoes for the same price. But there doesn't seem to be much point to doing so, what with the world ending and all.

12:45 pm: Strangely, the world still exists. Could the ancient Mayans have been wrong? Impossible. They were ancient, and everyone knows that ancient people possessed mysterious wisdom.

3:30: I had a troubling dream in which my dog got lost in an office building. Then I found her. Such a vision must surely presage the Apocalypse.

4:45: My ladyfriend called, wondering what to buy for her twelve year old niece (who, due to some freakish substance being put into our food supply, looks about 23 years old). I told her her choice of Christmas gift matters not since the world is ending. My ladyfriend, unconvinced by this reasoning, thought that maybe she should buy a t-shirt for her niece, something with kind of a punky 80s edge to it. Perhaps she can find one that says: "It's the end of the world as we know it"?

5:00: Still unsure about the monk strap shoes. I've never owned shoes with buckles before -- too flashy; not my style. On the other hand, they are Italian and cost only two dollars. If this is the end of the world, perhaps I should meet it wearing Italian leather with fancy buckles.

5:20: My ladyfriend is still out there, prowling the stores, still unsure as to what to get her niece. I suggested an oversized book about art with lots of pictures in it, purchased at the discount book place. Such a volume will seem like a really expensive present even though it won't cost very much.

And yet -- that choice would be folly. The niece will never get a chance to read said book. Why? Because the world will end today. I know it will. The Mayans said it, I believe it, and that settles it.

5:23: What if we did die, and this is what the afterlife looks like?

6:30: Had some leftover Pizza Hut. Good Doomsday food. Maybe I'll head over to Mickey D's to grab some coffee. If that thrift store is still open, I'll take it as a sign. Omens...omens are everywhere...

7:00: My ladyfriend tells me that she met someone working in a Wal-Mart who knows French. Unreal! Not only that: Earlier today, I crossed a street in Baltimore -- and a driver actually slowed down when he saw a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Repeat: In Baltimore. Can there be any doubt that we have entered upon a time of high paranormality?

7:30: That store was closed, so it looks like I'll be journeying to the hereafter wearing brown shoes and a black belt. If Saint Bernadette sees me like this, I'll be mortified.

10:05: Y'know, I'm starting to think that maybe there won't even be an apocalypse today. Maybe it'll be one of those localized apocalypses, or a symbolic apocalypse, like the ones in Alan Moore comic books.

There have been at least three world-ends in the Moore ouvre -- in Watchmen, Miracleman, and Promethea. Promethea is his masterpiece in the medium (especially the qabala sequence), but it all ends with an apocalypse so lame that it barely even counts as an apocalypse. It's a Grand Anticlimax.

The way I'm feeling right now is similar to the way I felt when I read the end of that series. Look, I don't want to hear any crap about a "new way of thinking" or "a new course for humanity" or any of that other New Agey horse manure. What I want is very simple -- volcanoes and comets and earthquakes and tidal waves and zombies and mass violence and exploding suns, all ending in the TOTAL FUCKING ANNIHILATION OF ALL EXISTENCE EVERYWHERE. Is that too much to ask for?

Goddamn Mayans. They let me down.

12:52 AM: As a reader kindly pointed out, I live on the East Coast and the Mayans lived out west. So, technically, it is still December 21 in Maya-Land. There's still a chance.

I note that Demi Moore has left that big goon from TV. I've always liked her. She's free, and that's the good news. The bad news is that she'd probably never sleep with me -- except, maybe, perhaps, if I were the last man on earth.

Come on, Mayans! Help me out here! I'm beggin' ya!

4:12 AM: Y'know, if this sort of thing keeps up, I'm never going to trust an ancient Mayan again.

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Guns: Three scenarios

This blog has never published a polemic in favor of any form of gun control. I've always presumed -- and still presume -- that the issue is a loser for Democrats. On the other hand, gun zealots (as opposed to gun owners) have always struck me as being more than a little creepy. And the concept of regulation is built into the Second Amendment itself. (Look it up.)

Despite my own mixed feelings on this issue, I would like to share with readers a piece written by a friend to this blog, someone who has very firm ideas. Well, he's not so much "a friend to this blog" as he is the husband of a friend of a friend to this blog. At any rate, he has produced a worthwhile piece of writing. Whatever your stance on gun regulation, you will surely agree with the sentiments expressed in the final paragraph.

The author's name is Mike; all the words below the asterisks are his.

*  *  *

Open letter to the NRA and gun enthusiasts everywhere:

Hi folks,

Many of you think the world would be more peaceful and polite if everyone carried a sidearm and practiced vigilante justice, so here's a few scenarios for you.

1.) You're walking down the street and you see someone in the distance being held up at gunpoint. Being a good citizen with your own pistol at hand, you draw it and prepare to issue a challenge to the attacker. Unfortunately, someone you hadn't noticed has just come out of a nearby doorway, has not noticed the holdup down the street, and sees you draw your gun - clearly up to no good - and pulls his out (everyone is a good citizen and well armed, remember?) and blows you away. Criminal finishes the business at hand in the ensuing commotion and gets away.

2.) All of the above happens except that no one stops you in your heroic duty. You announce your intentions to the criminal and he engages you in a firefight. Since very few humans are crack shots with a pistol, no matter how much they practice, the first few bullets fly past both of you. Maybe you get him. Maybe he gets you. But oops, one or two people who weren't able to get out of the line of fire in time get mortally wounded or killed outright. Shit happens.

3.) Same scenario as #2 but you don't want this scumbag to get away so you move in as close as possible without saying anything (there are of course no law enforcement standards or practices for citizens doing their civic duty) and blow a large hole in the back of the guy's head. He's down and you feel great. The citizen you just assisted picks up the firearm he was forced to discard, shoots you through the chest and says, "Thanks, I was going to hold that guy up and take his wallet, but he drew on me first!" Oops, I guess not being clairvoyant will be a drawback in such a "society."

Yours is a gallant and sober society, right? Hell no! People drink, take drugs and argue and drive however they want, because they're FREE, dammit! And since they love their guns, they have them in every situation: when they're in a hurry and have to cut through a bunch of others to get where they're going on time (POW, POW); when they're drunk and get in someone's face (POW, POW); when they get dumped by their girlfriend, or fired, or cheated on (POW, POW, POW, POW, POW).

You can argue home and public protection all you want. My response is, "NO, FUCK YOU AND YOUR SUPPOSED RIGHTS. I DON'T TRUST YOU OR ANYONE ELSE WITH A GUN."

If you are worried about criminals, then do your part to prevent them from coming into being. Don't raise them. Don't ignore your kids or only teach them fear and paranoia. Volunteer for or donate to a youth group. Don't bully, denigrate, or piss people off because it makes you feel superior. Don't engage in the kind of behavior that causes other people to feel wronged.

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Forecast

We had a little rain today, but it looks like there's a warm front coming in.

You know, tomorrow will either bring total annihilation or it will give us still another reason to laugh at New Age ninnies. Whatever happens, it's a win-win!

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Joe Biden gives his guarantee

In August, 2012, Joe Biden visited a diner in Virginia and got into a conversation with patrons about Social Security:

"Hey, by the way, let's talk about Social Security," Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn't talking about changing the popular entitlement program.

"Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security," Biden said, per a pool report. "I flat guarantee you."

Uhhhh....Joe?

Chained CPI?

Joe? Anything to say about that?

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Heckling Hagel

I never thought that I'd be defending Chuck Hagel, but the guy seems to have made the right enemies. Bill Kristol, for one. From Politico:

The William Kristol-founded conservative Emergency Committee for Israel says it’s launching cable ads starting Thursday slamming Chuck Hagel, the latest in a spate of criticism over the man who’s said to top President Barack Obama’s list for Secretary of Defense.

The spot, which hits Hagel for voting against sanctions on Iran, is an indication of the next phase of attacks on the former lawmaker, whose past stands on Israel have gotten the most attention.

The American Jewish Committee -- not usually considered a conservative group -- also opposes Hagel.

Meanwhile, as Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli-based columnist points out, “The disbelievers find it hard to comprehend that Obama would want to appoint such a controversial personality to the job, thereby almost ensuring clashes with Israel over Iran and the Palestinian issue. In fact, some of them still expect Obama not to make the appointment.The smirkers are, well, smirking. These are the Israelis who never bought the Obama-is-a-friend-of-Israel line, and they see in a possible Hagel appointment proof that they were right all along.” Indeed, the irony of a Hagel appointment would be that Obama would have even less influence and credibility with the Israelis, whose unilateral action against Iran he has forestalled.

Obama did that? I thought that this scenario was still in the "tea leaf reading" category, not the "verified fact" category.

At any rate, I think that what we're seeing here is a replay of the campaign against Rice. Having tasted blood recently, the right-wingers want more.

It is simply ludicrous for anyone to portray Chuck Hagel as a closet anti-Semite or a terror-enabler or a squishy peacenik dove. From The American Conservative:

It’s impossible to portray Hagel as a would-be McGovernite, and the fact that he and Obama are frequently in agreement exposes how absurd most hawkish complaints against Obama are.

Hagel has not been a maximally hawkish supporter of Israel, but the smear against Hagel on this point is particularly loathsome and of course has absolutely no merit. If Hagel criticized Israel’s 2006 Lebanon war, that’s because the overkill and folly that war represented deserved to be criticized. If he believes that attacking Iran would have disastrous consequences and war ought to be avoided, that makes him unusually sane for a member of the political class. The fact that such a despicable smear is already being thrown around (albeit by an anonymous aide who won’t attach his name to the slur) reeks of desperation. The “isolationist” charge is much more amusing because Hagel has often warned against the dangers of so-called “isolationism” (and occasionally insulationism), and has been happy to fling that charge at others as all internationalists do from time to time. Being a thoroughly conventional and generally hawkish internationalist in his own right, Hagel has indulged in chasing away the non-existent bogeyman of “isolationism” almost as often as the people now attacking him. Hawks fling these charges so often at so many people that they have lost almost all of their power, and at the same time they serve to discredit the positions of the people lobbing the accusations.

Yes, there is indeed an argument to be made against Hagel -- from the other direction. Calling the man insufficiently neo-connish is like calling a Three Musketeers bar "diet food" because it doesn't have as much fat and sugar as a gallon of ice cream.

The anti-Semitism canard stems from the fact that Hagel once dared to offer some forbidden words:

"The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here," but as he put it, "I'm a United States senator. I'm not an Israeli senator."

If that sentiment is considered controversial, then we need to reconfigure our national mind-set.

Politics in America is pretty simple: Find out Bill Kristol's position, then go the other way. Kristol's ginned-up crusade is the best reason I can think of to root for Hagel to get the job.

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No cuts to Social Security!

If the cause is important, should I get over my antipathy for Daily Kos -- on just this one occasion? Yes. And you have no idea how much it galls me to do so.

Please, I beg you -- go here and sign the petition. Yes, it is a Kos petition. But it sends the right message, so do it anyways.

As part of the fiscal showdown negotiations, President Obama has proposed cutting Social Security for almost all current and future beneficiaries.

Social Security should not be a part of the negotiations. It does not contribute even $1 to the deficit, and according to even the most pessimistic projections it is 100% solvent for more than 20 years.

Send an email to the White House telling President Obama to immediately stop proposing any cuts to Social Security.

Better still would be for you to send a message directly to the White House and to your congressional representative. But let's not pretend that you'll do that.

Obama and Boehner are really close on this chained CPI business. Only you can put a stop to it.

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Why do our young go violently mad?

A friend to this blog, Bill Dash, sent an email that asks an important question which arises out of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. The words below the asterisks are his (published here by permission); I'll have a comment or two afterwords.

* * *

Yes, something quite strange seems to be going on. I’m referring to the way the phenomenon of an individual going “postal” and committing mass murder has turned into an all but routine component of American life. It started out as an almost exclusively adult aberration, but over the past 15 years or so adolescents and college kids have increasingly become regular contributors to this bizarre cavalcade of butchery and the corresponding national drama of breast-beating and finger pointing that flares-up before fading away until the next one.

The overwhelming majority of the time the weapons of choice are firearms, though not always. Which really isn’t terribly surprising considering guns are the most efficient and convenient means for killing that’s available to civilians in our period of history. Why knock-off Caesar with a flintknapped obsidian knife, when you can use a razor sharp Roman gladius?

But not that many years back these sorts of wild killing sprees where an embittered individual massacres a bunch of strangers were basically non-existent, yet modern firearms then were as just as ubiquitous as now, if not more so.

Civilian semi-automatic pistols and rifles have been widely available since the early 1920s. In fact, back in the twenties and early thirties, in many parts of the country, anyone, I mean anybody who had the cash could saunter into a good hardware store, not a gun shop mind you, but an ordinary well-stocked hardware store and buy a brand new Thompson automatic sub-machinegun with a 50 round drum magazine and all the .45acp ammo you wanted. Sears sold them mail-order. Yet, apart from their notorious use in gangland wars (the Chicago typewriter) and by professional bandits like the Dillinger gang, Clyde and Bonnie Barrow or George “machine-gun” Kelly, as far as I can determine no submachine gun or gun of any sort was ever employed simply as a murderously efficient scythe for reaping a harvest of homicidal rage, involving complete strangers. I don’t claim to have conducted exhaustive research on the subject. Perhaps a case or two may exist, but if so that just further demonstrates how exceptionally rare that sort of crime used to be.

Not only have semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns been around for about one hundred years or so, as a matter of fact, soon after World War Two, the American market became flooded with inexpensive war-surplus rifles and handguns.

(One memorable example: The year was 1959, I remember going downtown one Friday afternoon after school let out early, to my favorite NYC Army-Navy store and seeing a group of scruffy, bearded tough guys in olive drab combat fatigues buying a large number of surplus M1-Garrand rifles. Turned out they were Cuban guerrillas. At the time, high-quality surplus rifles were so inexpensive that it paid for Cuban revolutionaries to fly up to NYC and buy over-the-counter weapons.)

That widespread situation of plenty of low-priced surplus guns lasted right up till the mid-sixties. Homicidal-maniacs and serial-killers certainly weren’t exactly a rarity at that time. Why no impersonal mass-murders then, I wonder?

But the fact is you do not need semi-automatic guns to go on a blood-drenched killing spree. Magazine-fed, cartridge loading, multiple-shot rifles and revolvers have been commonly available to the public since the mid-1870s. Though not quite as efficient as modern semi-autos, these weapons were and still are perfectly suitable for conducting a rage fueled mass murder. But the indiscriminant and impersonal slaughter of strangers or workplace co-workers only started becoming a regular occurrence in the latter part of the 20th century.

So what changed Joe? Do you have any hunches as to what may have happened to give rise to this new category of human time-bomb: the disgruntled and/or deranged mass-murdering gunman ? And why is it that such murderously dramatic behavior never evidenced itself in earlier periods of American history when guns suitable for mass murder already existed and were commonplace ?

*  *  *

Cannon here, again. I'll add this. The Sandy Hook Elementary massacre was committed by a young man frequently -- though perhaps erroneously -- described as suffering from "Asperger's Syndrome." This tragedy follows hard upon a horrifying tableau in Wyoming, in which a young man named Christopher Krumm murdered his father in front of the father's students in a community college science class. Krumm blamed his father for passing on Aspergers.

Although this disorder has received a lot of gruesome publicity in recent days, it was unheard-of until the 1980s. Many experts doubt that Asperger's even exists; the DSM will drop its entry in its new edition.

I know a young boy -- the son of a friend -- commonly presumed (though not officially diagnosed) to have this disorder. He certainly displays many of the signs: The boy is highly intelligent, poorly socialized, lacking in empathy, and given to strange fixations and weirdly repetitive actions. His behavior is appalling. Worst of all, he seems to recognize no connection between the things he does/says and the punishment he receives. Neither a soft nor harsh approach to discipline works, because the outside world simply does not penetrate this boy's consciousness. Bright as he is, he cannot discern a linkage between cause and effect; when he shouts blood-curdling things at his mother, he seems genuinely surprised when sent to his room -- each and every time. My dog learns such things more easily.

When I was growing up, I didn't know any kids who acted in this fashion. Sure, many of my classmates were brats. Some were cruel, uncontrollable -- downright fiendish. But none were quite like this guy.

Is the Asperger's diagnosis simply trendy? A fiction? A psychiatric catch-all term? Or -- odd thought -- has human personality itself changed over the years?

I think that question links directly to the one Bill Dash has asked.

Added note: Adam Lanza, who was quite computer savvy, appears to have intentionally damaged his hard drive with a hammer. He would not have done so unless there were something on that drive he wished to keep people from knowing. That hard drive must have stored an electronic diary or the logs of online chats or something similar.

He knew that such evidence would be recoverable if erased.

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Deal or no deal

A fiscal cliff deal appears to be in the making. The Republicans seem willing to allow a fairly substantial rise in taxes on the affluent; in return, they want cuts in Social Security -- and the cuts look to be rather substantive. That is to say, the deal will accept something called chained CPI, an arcane term which means fewer cost-of living increases for seniors. As Brad DeLong puts it:

"Chained-CPI" is code for "let's really impoverish some women in their 90s!" It's a bad policy. It should be off the table.

Chained CPI also disproportionately hikes taxes on people in the $30-$40,000 range.

So far, this is reminding me of the Obama of the bad old days, when he was far too ready to wheel and deal on Social Security.

Paul Krugman says that the Medicare eligibility age will not be raised, but Ezra Klein seems to indicate that this option may still be on the table.

On stimulus, unemployment insurance will be extended, as will the refundable tax credits. Some amount of infrastructure spending is likely. Perversely, the payroll tax cut, one of the most stimulative policies in the fiscal cliff, will likely be allowed to lapse, which will deal a big blow to the economy.

I prefer spending on infrastructure. Creates jobs; increases the rate of growth; may ultimately pay for itself. The real problem right now is not deficit spending but uneployment. Full employment pushes wages up, which slowly but surely pushes people into higher tax brackets, which brings in scads of new revenue, which painlessly eases the deficit.

Are you curious about Defense cuts? Taylor Marsh sums up:

As for Pentagon cuts, they’re hidden under a unicorn in an addendum you’ll find after a wild goose chase.

Okay, so it’s not that opaque. Obama’s new deal calls for $100 billion in defense cuts, while his cave on Social Security is $30 billion more than that.

Obama is not negotiating from a position of strength.

The hell of it is, many GOP legislators (and rank-and-filers) will hate this deal too, since taxes on the rich are the only thing those guys really and truly care about. Boehner will have a harder time getting his team to go for a deal like this than Obama will -- even though the Dems are the ones getting screwed.

Given the situation, every Dem in the country should do whatever they can to force Obama into pursuing a more progressive course. The Republicans are going to shriek and howl anyways, so we might as well give 'em something to shriek and howl about.

A new story in The Hill indicates that the military is the place to cut the fat:

Several high-profile defense think tanks from across the political spectrum are on relatively the same page, in terms of what kind of financial hit the Pentagon should take in the coming decade, according to a recently released report.

The study, compiled by Washington-based National Security Network, found the average spending reduction to DOD coffers recommended by these think thanks came to just over $510 billion over the next ten years.

That number dwarfs the $100 to $300 billion top defense industry leaders proposed in early December as the most budget reductions the Pentagon could handle, while maintaining national security priorities worldwide.

If Democrats must make one painful sacrifice, let it be the payroll tax cut. As for Social Security: Raise the cap; problem solved.

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