I've always been hesitant to complain about Google in these pages. After all, that company is the founder of the feast: Google owns Blogger, without which we would lack many blogs, including the one you are reading at present.

But I'm concerned by Google's new Chrome OS, the operating system that relies on "cloud computing." Under the new regime, you place your files on the net, not on your system, and you access those files via your browser. The only programs available to you would be those bestowed upon you by the gods of the internet.

The upside of this approach is obvious: The computer will switch on much faster, you won't have to pay for a hard drive, and you can't lose data when your drive goes bad. With Chrome OS, the only onboard drive is solid state. (Of course, the financial burden imposed by the traditional hard drive set-up isn't so onerous these days -- you can get a terrabyte for about a hundred bucks.)

The downside should be equally obvious. What about periods when you aren't connected to the net? I had a very irritating month earlier this year, waiting for ATT to hook me up; eventually, I got sick of waiting and took my business elsewhere. Even when connected, the Chrome OS throughput probably would not allow for image processing, video editing, game playing or even the design of a fairly complex web page.

And how will files be named? By URL? That would suck.

A lot of commenters don't talk about what I consider the most important drawback: Privacy.

Can we trust Google with our data?

Before we proceed, please understand: I spend a lot of time making fun of conspiracy cranks. I have a phobic reaction toward people who think that Freemasons run the universe, and I don't have much sympathy for nutjobs who seek out covert Illuminati messages on dollar bills. Nevertheless, I retain a healthy paranoia when it comes to three letters: CIA.

Spies are real. They're not figments of Alex Jones' imagination.

History teaches us that nations fall into decay when their Janissaries attain too much power. History also teaches us that the "war on terror" can be and has been used as a pretext for repressing dissent. I'm an old-school lefty who thought that Frank Church was one of the good guys. I think that every citizen of every nation must strive to keep all spooks leashed.

Is there a longstanding relationship between Google and the CIA? Yes.

While we don't have as much evidence as we would like -- in these realms, we never have as much evidence as we would like -- the evidence we do have suggests that Google and the Agency have a long and abiding history together.

Google is the source of Intellipedia, a version of Wikipedia which allows intelligence professionals to trade information about their targets. We may fairly presume that the Google personnel who have worked on this program must have high security clearances, and that the physical servers are protected by the United States government.

Intellipedia was set up in 2006. It would be naive to suggest that the Google/gummint relationship does not stretch back much further. Folks in the intelligence community must have very good reason to trust Google, or they would worry about back doors in the software.

Is Intellipedia subject to FOIA requests? I suspect it is, although the matter has not been put to the test.

Here's a fun factoid: Barack Obama has created at least one Intellipedia entry -- on Occidental College, or so it has been reported. As Arte Johnson used to say: Verrrrrry EEEN-teresting. The head guy at Oxy's political science department was an old CIA hand close to Brzezinski. No-one really knows why Obama chose Oxy.

Back to Google.

In-Q-Tel, the CIA venture capital firm, has invested in Google. In-Q-Tel sold some $2.2 million worth of Google stock back in 2005. That stock was acquired when Google took over the In-Q-Tel funded firm that gave us the technology behind Google Earth. Although some news stories have indicated that the relationship ended with the 2005 stock sale, the linkages between Google and spookworld are continue.

And they go back to the very beginning of the firm. A former CIA case officer named Robert David Steele -- best known for his congressional testimony on the insufficient attention given to open source intelligence -- has on several occasions said that the CIA funded Google in the early days. True, Steele said this in an interview with the dreaded Alex Jones. But Steele has made the same claim elsewhere.

I strongly urge you to read this important article on HS Today (a site devoted to Homeland Security). The author is Anthony Kimery, a name long known to me; I consider him both cautious and trustworthy. Kimery thus quotes Steele:

Robert David Steele, intelligence veteran and CEO of OSS.Net, Inc. which sponsored last week’s event, told HSToday.us Tuesday evening that "Google is being actively hypocritical and deceptive in playing up its refusal to help the Department of Justice when all along it has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army's Intelligence and Security Command."

Steele added, “I have no doubt that Google, in its arrogance, decided it could make a deal with the devil and not get caught.

“...In my view, a secret financial and secret information sharing relationship with the US Intelligence Community - or any other intelligence community - violates everything about Google that should be sacred, and suggests that we can no longer trust them to live up to their original ethos.”

Google has officially denied Steele's allegations. However, Kimery developed other sources who verified Steele's account:

Google’s alleged secret relationship with the US intelligence community (IC) was divulged by an IT contractor and confirmed by US intelligence authorities familiar with the matter during the OSS.Net IOP conference near Washington, DC. The contractor, who spoke on a not-for-attribution basis, said that at least one US intelligence agency he declined to identify is working to “leverage Google’s [user] data monitoring” capability as part of an effort by the IC to glean from this data information of “national security intelligence interest” in the war on terror.

The intelligence sources, also speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, would not say under what authority the IC had obtained Google’s cooperation, or which intelligence agency is involved. One of the sources did say, however, that the CIA’s Office of Research and Development “has been giving them additional money and guidance and requirements.”

The spies may now use data mining technology to follow the click stream trail left by each Google user.

"Click streams" are the paths visitors take through a web site. Analyzing click stream data can help uncover navigation patterns and common paths. In short: User browsing habits, from which a great deal can be gleaned.

Tellingly, Google and Spookworld have a mutual revolving door when it comes to employment:

Former IC software engineers are known to have worked for Google, and Google technical job announcements have noted applicants seeking to work on the Google Search Appliance “must have current government top security clearance” at the TS/SI level. "SI," or special intelligence, is a euphemism for communications intelligence, or COMINT.

To see one such job announcement -- from as far back as 2002 -- go here and scroll down.

Steele has named Google's main contact at CIA's Office of Research and Development: Dr. Rick Steinheiser.

Unsurprisingly, researching Steinheiser is not easy, although we know that he has long had an interest in data mining. (See the acknowledgment here.) His CIA employment is confirmed here and here.

Google (the search engine) reports that Steinheiser also gave a lecture on data mining at a conference hosted by the Mitre Corporation. I tried to call up those pages, only to encounter a "dangerous site" warning on Firefox. Simultaneously, my malware detector told me that I had picked up a virus that needed to be quarantined immediately. If ever I try to look up anything Mitre-related again, I'll do so on a library computer.

The bottom line is this: The CIA, through Google, can track your web habits. Through Facebook, the intelligence community can track your interactions with your friends. And now, if you use Chrome OS, the data miners will finally gain access to your sanctum sanctorum -- your private files.

The final door will spring open -- and you will have provided the key to the lock.

Many will say: "So what? I've got nothing to worry about. I've done nothing wrong!"

Even if everything you do on the computer is innocent, ask yourself this: Would you allow federal agents to enter your home without a warrant in order to scan the contents of your bookshelves and rifle through your physical files? Would you ever allow agents unfettered access to your physical mailbox?

No. Purely as a matter of principle, you'd tell those snoops to go to hell.

At least, that's what your fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers would have said. The new generation is, I fear, far more sheeplike.

In former times, Americans were taught to sneer at those foreign citizens who reacted with servility whenever the NKVD or the Stasi intruded into private life. Yet modern Americans are now far more obeisant. We willingly join Facebook. And now many of us will entrust our most private documents to Google.

In the recent film The Good Shepherd (a thinly disguised bio of CIA counterintelligence officer James Jesus Angleton) a character based on Richard Helms relates an amusing but unnerving anecdote. A congressman had asked "Helms" a question of nomenclature: "Why do you guys call yourselves 'CIA'? Why don't you use the word 'the' -- as in the CIA?"

"Helms" replied: "Because you don't refer to the God." Permalink

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Believe it or not, a terrific print of the entire, uncut film is available for high quality download -- legal download -- FOR FREE -- right now. You have to sit through a small commercial at first, but that's it. You can download using any video downloader program.

This situation probably won't last, so grab the film NOW NOW NOW. (You may recall our previous mention of this masterwork.)

K-7: Some time ago, on Salon or Slate -- I forget which -- a woman wrote a columnist asking for advice on how to tell if a man is gay. Here's a simple solution: Show him this page. If he doesn't spend at least 30 seconds convinced that he has just seen the coolest thing ever, you're probably not dealing with a heterosexual. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Yeah, I just indulged in stereotyping. But you know I'm right.
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(This is a bit of non-political weekend fun. Don't take it too seriously.)

No, I'm not pulling a Dan Brown on you: Leonardo da Vinci really did write "prophecies," found in the Codex Atlanticus. Many of these quotes seem more like axioms or observations, applicable to any time, although the ones printed here seem intended to be taken as forecasts of things to come. Each prophecy carries a poetic title. Quite a few of these prophecies are very trippy and weird, at least on first reading. The strange language becomes clearer as the reader starts to grasp Leonardo's metaphorical argot.

Let's see how the old bugger did...

OF DREAMING

It shall seem to men that they see new destructions in the sky, and the flames descending there from shall seem to have taken night and to flee away in terror; they shall hear creatures of every kind speaking human language; they shall run in a moment, in person, to divers parts of the world without movement; amidst the darkness they shall see the most radiant splendours. O marvel of mankind! What frenzy has thus impelled you! You shall hold converse with animals of every species, and they with you in human language. You shall behold yourselves falling from great heights without suffering any injury; the torrents will bear you with them as they mingle in their rapid course.

Aside from the talking animal stuff, this one seems pretty damned impressive. The first part provides an adequate description of a night-time bombing raid, or perhaps a nuclear attack. The "radiant splendours" in the darkness sounds like a visit to Vegas.

Falling from great heights, borne by torrents (of air)? The parachute, obviously.

OF BOOKS WHICH INCULCATE PRECEPTS
Bodies without souls shall by their sayings supply precepts which shall help us to die well.

Maybe he's talking about James Arthur Ray.

OF CATCHING LICE
There will be many hunters of animals who the more they catch the fewer they will have; and so conversely they will have more in proportion as they catch less.

Species depletion. Over-fishing. Or maybe he really is talking about lice, in which case the riddle is just plain silly.

OF THE WORSHIPPING OF PICTURES OF SAINTS
Men shall speak with men who shall not hear them; their eyes shall be open and they shall not see; they will speak to them and there shall be no reply; they will ask pardon from one who has ears and does not hear; they will offer light to one who is blind, and to the deaf they will appeal with loud clamour.

Boy, tell me about it. Ever send a letter to a politician?

OF THE BELLS OF MULES WHICH ARE CLOSE TO THEIR EARS
There shall be heard in many parts of Europe instruments of various sizes making divers melodies, causing great weariness to those who hear them most closely.

Hey, I like my headphones! Maybe Leo's just being bitchy. Or maybe, on a psychic visit to the 21st century, he heard a few minutes of hip-hop.

OF SOLDIERS ON HORSEBACK
Many shall be seen carried by large animals with great speed, to the loss of their lives and to instant death. In the air and on the earth shall be seen animals of different colours, bearing men furiously to the destruction of their lives.

For "animals" read "vehicles." Now it makes perfect sense, dunnit?

OF A STICK WHICH IS A DEAD THING
The movement of the dead shall cause many who are living to flee away with grief and lamentation and cries.

Obviously, on one of his psychic trips to our times, Leo caught a George Romero flick.

More seriously: One of the other prophecies (not printed here) makes clear that Leo used "dead" as a poetic metaphor for iron or metal. Thus, a moving metallic thingamawhatzit will cause many to flee: The tank. The mobile machine gun.

OF BEATING THE BED TO REMAKE IT
To such a pitch of ingratitude shall men come that that which shall give them lodging without any price shall be loaded with blows, in such a way that great parts of the inside of it shall be detached from their place, and shall be turned over and over within it.

That which gives us lodging without price is, of course, the Earth.

OF THE PRECIOUS METALS
There shall come forth out of dark and gloomy caves that which shall cause the whole human race to undergo great afflictions, perils, and death. To many of those who follow it, after much tribulation it will yield delight; but whosoever pays it no homage will die in want and misery. It shall bring to pass an endless number of crimes; it shall prompt and incite wretched men to assassinate, to steal, and to enslave; it shall hold its own followers in, suspicion; it shall deprive free cities of their rank: it shall take away life itself from many; it shall make men torment each other with many kinds of subterfuge, deceits, and treacheries. O vile monster! How much better were it for men that thou shouldst go back to hell! For this the vast forests shall be stripped of their trees; for this an infinite number of creatures shall lose their lives.

Obviously, he's talking about gold -- lucre, lolly, dinero, cash. "Vast forests shall be stripped of their trees" -- well, that's South America.

OF WRITING LETTERS FROM ONE COUNTRY TO ANOTHER
Men from the most remote countries shall speak one to another and shall reply.

And they shall receive news from Nigeria of great bequests and winning lottery numbers.

OF THE HEMISPHERES WHICH ARE INFINITE AND DIVIDED BY AN INFINITE NUMBER OF LINES, IN SUCH A WAY THAT EVERY MAN HAS ALWAYS ONE OF THESE LINES BETWEEN HIS FEET
Men shall speak with and touch and embrace each other while standing each in different hemispheres, and shall understand each other's language.

An infinite number of lines beneath our feet, connecting us all together. In other words, a World Wide Web. With Babelfish!

OF FRIARS WHO HOLD CONFESSION
The unhappy women of their own accord shall go to reveal to men all their wantonness and their shameful and most secret acts.

Shrinks. IRC. MySpace.

OF THE SELLING OF PARADISE
A countless multitude will sell publicly and without hindrance things of the very greatest value, without licence from the Lord of these things, which were never theirs nor in their power; and human justice will take no account of this.

Leo meets Pat Robertson.

OF SAILING IN SHIPS
The trees of the vast forests of Taurus and of Sinai, of the Apennines and of Atlas, shall be seen speeding by means of the air from east to west, and from north to south, and transporting by means of the air a great quantity of men. Oh, how many vows! How many deaths! What partings between friends and relatives shall there be! How many who shall nevermore behold their own lands or their native country, and shall die unsepulchred and their bones be scattered in divers parts of the world!

He's talking about air ships.

OF FRIARS WHO BY SPENDING ONLY WORDS RECEIVE GREAT RICHES AND BESTOW PARADISE
Invisible money will cause many who spend it to triumph.

Televangelists. Electronic funds transfers.

OF THE BARBERS
All men will take refuge in Africa.

Damned if I can figure this one out. But it seems pregnant with meaning. What do you think he meant by "barbers"? Berbers live in Africa...

OF THE THURIFER WITH INCENSE
Some shall go about in white vestments with arrogant gestures threatening others with metal and fire, which yet have never done them any harm.

A thurifer is a cleric who swings a thurible. A thurible is that round metal thingie which emits smoke -- a.k.a. a censer. (You've seen it.) Except for da Vinci, no-one ever thought that "clouds" could be used as weapons -- until the advent of chemical warfare.

OF THE LIFE OF MEN WHO EVERY TEN YEARS ARE CHANGED IN BODILY SUBSTANCE
Men will pass when dead through their own bowels.

"When we're healthy we essentially regrow an entirely new skin every seven weeks or so; we replace all the cells in our bones about every ten years." That quote comes from here. How could Leonardo have known...? Permalink

I am no fan of Barack Obama. I would have preferred a McCain victory in 2008. And I wrote posts critical of ACORN during primary season.

Even so, I cannot freaking believe the latest polls: The majority of Republicans -- and some 26 percent of the overall electorate -- think that ACORN stole the election for Obama. By comparison, only 13 percent of the country thinks that vote fraud helped propel Bush to victory in 2004.

(Those 13 percenters are almost certainly right, by the way.)

C'mon. Get real. In 2008, the Democrats could have won even if they had nominated Squeaky Fromme. What need of vote fraud?

The Republican party gave the country an unpopular war and an economic meltdown. (Alas, a lot of people now seem to forget that both the catastrophe and the bailout occurred before the election. A lot of people also can't remember the date when 9/11 ocurred. Americans suck at chronology as much as they suck at geography.) John McCain, for reasons best known to himself, ran the softest, squishiest Republican campaign in memory. His inability to pretend to be a religious nut depressed the religious nut vote.

Are we to believe that ACORN could engineer massive vote fraud in a number of states -- faking up hundreds of thousands of votes, maybe millions of votes -- without access to either the machines or the tabulators? Are we to accept that this brobdinagian degree of vote burglary occurred without a single instance of cheating being detected by the Bush Department of Justice? Were there any significant telltale discrepancies between the actual vote totals, the pre-vote polls and the exit polls?

I'm continually stunned by humanity's ability to believe in hallucinations. The majority of the American people are also under the impression that you can end a recession by combating the deficit. (These same people couldn't get worked up about massive debts during flush times. When Dick Cheney said that deficits don't matter, did any Republicans care?) Worse, a growing percentage of the citizenry thinks that Democrats caused the recession.

We shouldn't make fun of the Scientologists for believing in Xenu. Most of your friends and neighbors accept fairy tales that are every bit as risible.
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Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio is the first prominent Democrat to call for the firing of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, the two Obama administration officials who gave Wall Streeters all the KY Jelly they needed to rape the taxpayers. DeFazio's candor impresses me. In fact, I'm so impressed that I want to run the words "DeFazio for President in 2012" past my audience.

Yeah, I know how most Americans will react to this suggestion: "Peter who?"

Perhaps the better question is: "Who else?"

Well, there's Obama. Believe it or not, I'd love for him to get his act together. I'd love to vote for a newer, smarter, better Obama in 2012. In all likelihood, though, his poll numbers will soon head into George-Bush-2007 territory. (And here's why.) That popularity plunge will, sadly, tar anyone connected to his administration -- including Hillary Clinton (who would make a fine president) and Joe Biden (whom I still like even though you probably don't).

2012 may resemble 1968, when Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race due to his unpopularity. If RFK had picked up the nomination, Nixon would have lost. Instead, the candidate was Hubert Humphrey, a good man saddled with the unhappy job of being LBJ's veep. Many Dems thought that a vote for Humphrey was a vote for a continuance of the Johnson administration (and of the war).

We know what happened back then. That's why we need an outsider in 2012.

But we also need an insider -- someone who has spent many years in D.C., someone who knows how the system works. Both Dubya and Obama have taught us the dangers of inexperience.

Peter DeFazio is definitely a maverick. He's not part of what the Corrente bloggers call "Versailles." Yet he has been in Congress since 1987 -- and before that, he worked for Representative Jim Weaver. He knows his way around.

He comes from a purple-tinged rural state. I doubt that many country folk in the red states could ever really come to hate him, not in the way they instinctively hate big-city Easterners.

He did four years in the military during Vietnam. He has an unambiguous record of opposing gun control. He wants a big increase in pay for active-duty military personnel. He is a church-goer but not a religious nut.

All of this serves to preempt the more obvious lines of right-wing attack.

If Obama fails as badly as I think he'll fail, if populist outrage over the Wall Street handouts continues to gather force, then the Democrats in 2012 will be desperate to find someone in the party who opposed the Obama economic team from the very beginning. Alas, nearly all of the Democratic opposition came from Blue Dogs whose conservatism would alienate the progressive base and the netroots.

There is but one exception: Peter DeFazio. Let's look at the record:

He opposed the Iraq war from the start. He didn't just give one (1) speech against the invasion, as Obama did. He voted against it.

He offers genuine opposition to free trade agreements.

He opposed the stimulus bill because "I couldn't justify borrowing money for tax cuts." (Most Americans don't know that much of the stim bill went to tax cuts, not job creation.) This principled opposition sent Obama into Al Capone mode. He warned DeFazio: "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother."

That bit of Chicago-style thuggery could prove golden for DeFazio in 2012.

Here's DeFazio on TARP back in January:

I was wrong. It was actually worse than I thought it could be.

The reference goes to the first bailout vote, during the waning days of Bush. (Isn't it odd how many people now forget that this vote even occurred? And it was only a year ago!) DeFazio voted against the October, 2008 TARP plan "emphatically," offering a much more sensible alternative. He was not taken in by the NOW NOW NOW propaganda which was so prevalent at the time.

You know, what did we get for $350 billion? I mean, that's the question my constituents are asking. And that's now the question my colleagues -- even those who supported it -- are asking.

RYSSDAL: How are you going to vote this time when the second $350 billion comes up?

DeFazio: Well, first, today, I want to see these very strong restrictions put in place. But I'm still not inclined to vote for it. I wanted two amendments that aren't being allowed. I would have split the money and said, "OK, here's part of it. Let's see what you do with it." And then, secondly, I still want to impose a minuscule transfer tax, something we had in this country throughout the Great Depression, throughout World War II, up until the '60s, on stock transfers. It wouldn't hurt people in 401(k)'s. And legitimate traders it would be one-quarter of 1 percent, so Wall Street could pay to bailout itself.

That transfer tax -- a tax on stock trades -- is something I have advocated in a number of previous posts. Such a tax would have held in check the insane computerized trading we've seen recently, trading which enriched Goldman Sachs unfairly and led to an utterly distorted market. This proposal would have saved the taxpayers a lot of money.

His opposition to TARP makes him one of the few Democrats that right-wingers will listen to -- hell, even Alex Jones has had him on his show. Yet DeFazio's opposition to "corporate socialism" -- to Goldman Sachs and environs -- will endear him to all true liberals.

DeFazio would not be a perfect candidate. On the issues, he has made one major mistake: He voted for the House health care reform bill, which, if passed by the Senate, will soon be very unpopular.

He's not young. He's not colorful. His rhetoric does not soar. He looks and sounds like a guy who should be running a neighborhood grocery store.

But he has one thing in his favor -- a penchant for being right.

Some of my feminist readers will automatically disqualify him from consideration on the grounds that he has committed the sin of penis-ownership. I hope that his record will make his genitalia forgivable.

No-other left-wing Democrat -- not even Kucinich -- has so consistently and loudly opposed Obama's economic mismanagement. In 2012, many disillusioned progressives who had once backed Obama will thank all of heaven's angels that Peter DeFazio has compiled such a principled resume. Permalink

At last, a Democrat who makes sense. Peter DeFazio is a hero -- a good populist. (I apologize for not presenting this video clip earlier, as I should have.)

I want to see this message on t-shirts, coffee mugs, buttons and bumper stickers: FIRE TIMMY AND LARRY!

And while you are making up those bumper stickers, see both this excellent BBC documentary on "The Greed Game" and Ian Welsh's excellent post on the same topic. The bottom line is the same: The banks which received bailout funds will use the money not to get the economy going again but to buy up undervalued companies. Welsh has some common-sense suggestions regarding how to fix the problem, but he doesn't expect any action:

Why? Because everyone knows that fixing the problem will end the gravy train for a lot of very rich people. A lot of very rich people who give a great deal of money to Democrats in general, and gave a lot of money to Obama in particular. If the cost of keeping that gravy train and the donations it enables going is tens of millions of unemployed people, well, so be it. Because serious people know that real change isn’t going to happen under Obama or under this Democratic Congress, so there’s no point in even talking to people who might suggest it.

If only DeFazio -- not Obama, not Pelosi, not Reid -- were the face of the Democratic party. We have been betrayed. Permalink

In the NYT, Nicholas Kristof offers a good piece on the reaction to Medicare legislation back in the 1960s. Medicare was called "the beginning of socialized medicine."

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.”

All of these prophecies, like so many other conservative predictions, were proven wrong. Republicans had earlier peddled similar nonsense about Social Security.

(Speaking of hyperbolic predictions, am I the only one who recalls the NRA poster that popped up all over California in the 1980s, when a gun registration proposition appeared on the ballot? The poster conflated Holocaust imagery with the words: "First register the guns -- then register the Jews.")

The Daily Howler points out an important omission in Kristof's column: Ronald Reagan receives no mention. Reagan, now the subject of so many Republican hagiographies, made anti-Medicare pronouncements that one can only describe as totally bugfuck insane.

First you [the governement] decide that the doctor can have so many patients. ... So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town, and the government has to say to him, "You can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors, you have to go live somewhere else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go. Pretty soon your son won't decide when he's in school where he will go or what he will do for a livin, but will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do. ...

And if you don't [stop Medicare] and I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free.

Yet Ronald Reagan is now revered by many older Americans who depend on Medicare. They also depend on Social Security, brought to this nation by Franklin Roosevelt, whom the Republicans, the Freidmanites and the fundamentalists continually demonize. On the right, it is an article of faith that FDR caused the Depression -- as though Herbert Hoover had not been president for four miserable years. I wish Americans who believed this nonsensical revisionism would have the decency to refrain from cashing their Social Security checks.

Incidentally, the above clip from Michael Moore's Sicko does not specify (as it ought) that Reagan's recorded diatribe against socialized medicine was prompted, in large part, by the Medicare debate.

At the Howler, Bob Somerby writes:

We’re always struck by how long disinformation campaigns can persist without any real attempt at rebuttal by the liberal world. Why are these types of complaints still effective today? Because the liberal world has been so inept at fashioning counter-messaging. Example: Very few voters have ever heard the ludicrous predictions Reagan made. That’s because the liberal world has never had the first idea how to fashion political movements: How to spread information, potent messaging, frameworks for understanding.

Somerby is being a tad unfair. People on the left can create a political movement: The Obama hysteria of 2008 proves the point. I didn't like that movement, but it was a movement. (At issue is the question of whether it was truly a left-wing movement, since so many "former" libertarians were in charge of catapulting the propaganda.)

Beyond that, it seems unfair for Somerby to carp about an inability to fashion killer counter-arguments to popular right-wing fantasies. Instead of dissing others, why doesn't he school them on how to do the job right? He's been in business for the better part of a decade, and he hasn't figured out a strategy. All he can do is tell the truth as best he sees. That's all I can do. That's all most of us know how to do.

Obviously, that tactic is not good enough.

Earlier this year, those who argued in favor of nationalizing the too-big-to-fail banks could not reach the ears of those who made the decision. We told the truth as we saw it, but we could not create a movement.

Those who created the "Obama as socialist" propaganda meme do not care about mere truth-telling. They are in the advertising business. They have a product to sell -- an image, an idea. A movement.

We now face two big battles, and we have precious few resources with which to fight the ghost of Ronald Reagan:

1. Medicare for all. If the current health "reform" bill in congress fails, we must renew the fight for single-payer. Even if the current reform bill succeeds, we must still fight for single payer, because the American people will soon express their outrage at mandates and fines. We cannot let this bad bill define the left.

But with what weaponry shall we do battle? The Democrats depleted their stores of ammunition fighting for Pelosi's stupid legislation. The logical first step would be to concentrate on the state-by-state approach -- California and Vermont are ready to lead the way.

Alas, the ghost of Ronald Reagan remains a formidable opponent.

1. A real stimulus. Obama's stim package failed for one simple reason: Too much of it did not go toward the creation of jobs. It went to tax cuts, grants, unemployment benefits, and so forth. Can you think of a modern-day equivalent of the TVA or the WPA that was created by the stimulus bill? Mr. Obama, you ain't no FDR.

Yet now the conservatives can claim that what they are pleased to call "socialism" has been tried and has failed. Obama has clearly signaled that there will be no jobs-creating "Stim II" package, because the we've already gone too deeply into debt. The Republicans have made further stimulus politically impossible. They have convinced the nation, and perhaps the administration, that now is the time to pay back the unpayable deficit.

As Ed Harrison of Naked Capitalism notes:

The President just doesn’t seem to understand how the economy works frankly. Reducing deficits by cutting spending or raising taxes decreases aggregate demand. And it is a decrease in aggregate demand which would induce a double-dip recession.

Once again, we confront the ghost of Reagan. In this instance, however, the host is Janus-faced.

Face 1 depicts Reagan as the apostle of small government and balanced budgets. This was the face he presented to the world when running for office.

Face 2 is the real Reagan legacy, as summarized by the immortal words of Dick Cheney: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

Except when a Democrat is in office, facing crushing unemployment. Then deficits matter. Permalink

Nice to see Michael Moore finally free himself from his illusions about Barack Obama. Too bad he couldn't give up his delusions about Hillary back in 2008.

On other fronts...

Brad DeLong used to scoff at the suggestion that we could enter a new Great Depression. Now he thinks that such an outcome is possible...

We could cushion the impact of another big downward shock by recapitalizing the banks again. But the failure of the Fed and the Treasury in the aftermath of Lehman to grab a share of the upside from its capital injection and purchase operations for the public in the form of warrants means that there is no coalition anywhere for a repeat or anything like a repeat of propping-up the banking system: the right thinks it is an unwarranted intervention in the free market, the left thinks that it is a giveaway to the undeserving and feckless superrich, and the center is bewildered because it is an enormous and poorly-structured intervention in the market, it is a giveaway to the undeserving and feckless superrich, and the optics are terrible.

So if another big bad shock hits the U.S. economy, what could the Obama administration possibly do?

Nothing. The new president had an enormous opportunity in the first half of 2009, and he squandered it. Future historians may one day recognize Obama's refusal to nationalize the "too big to fail" banks as the greatest mistake ever made by an American president -- greater, perhaps, than Dubya's decision to invade Iraq.

AIG was semi-nationalized, but only as a giveaway to the great Wall Street financial firms. So says Neil Barofsky, the Special Investigator General for TARP:

The SIG TARP report noted that "structure and effect of the FRBNY's assistance to AIG ... effectively transferred tens of billions of dollars of cash from the government to AIG's counterparties."

Barofsky seems to be one of the few officials that has to tell us what we already know: TARP is "almost certainly going to be a loss" for taxpayers and Geithner rolled over for Wall Street in the AIG negotiations.

Krugman sums it up:

Brad DeLong says that the loss of public trust due to the kid-gloves treatment of bankers has raised the probability of another Great Depression, because the public won’t support another round of bailouts even if it becomes desperately necessary. I agree — but I think the bigger cost is that we’ve greatly increased the chance of a Japanese-style lost decade, with I would now give roughly even odds of happening. Why? Because bank-friendly policies have squandered public trust in all government action: try talking to the general public about stimulus, and it’s all confounded in their minds with the deeply unpopular bailouts.

By itself, the AIG story would be damaging enough. But it’s part of a pattern — and that pattern has ended up undermining the economy’s prospects, big time.

Even Krugman doesn't see the irony. It's true that the public no longer trusts government action; what's worse is the public sees that the public sees all action as socialism. So tell me -- in what book is kowtowing to Wall Street considered socialism? Well, maybe in some insane book written by Cleon Skousen and hawked by Glenn Beck. But any actual socialist would have been appalled by Larry and Timmy's scheme of transferring public monies over to the world's worst capitalists.

The noxious aroma created by the bailout now perfumes any moves that could actually benefit the working class. Obama turned an historic opportunity into an epic FAIL.

On the bright side: Goldman Sachs has formally apologized for its role in the crisis. Thanks, Goldman Sachs! It's all better now! Permalink

Nick Xenophon -- an Australian senator with a name right out of Marvel comics -- calls Scientology a criminal organization and has demanded a full investigation.

The South Australian parliamentarian said he had been contacted by a number of former Scientologists after questioning the organisation's tax exempt status in a recent television interview.

Senator Xenophon said their correspondence implicated the organisation in a range of crimes, including forced imprisonment, coerced abortions, embezzlement of church funds, physical violence, intimidation and blackmail.

In one, Paul David Schofield said his first daughter, Lauren, had died after she was allowed to wander around one of the Church of Scientology's Sydney buildings and fell down some stairs.

Mr Schofield's second daughter, Kirsty, also died, in this case after ingesting potassium chloride at the family home - a substance he said was used widely in the organisation's "purification" programs.

In another letter, Aaron Saxton said as a member of the organisation he participated in the "forced confinement and torture" of others.

I had heard about the forced imprisonments conducted by the so-called "Rehabilitation Project Force" -- although as I understand it, Hubbard usually enforced this policy on the high seas, during his Captain Bligh period. However, this is the first account I've run into concerning Scientology's use of potassium chloride, which is used to kill people during executions by lethal injection. I wonder what the Hubbardians are doing with the stuff?

If you check Google Video, you'll find some good documentaries about Scientology, most of them produced by the BBC. This 1967 video shows Hubbard flat-out lying on camera about his previous marriages. The true facts were a matter of public record, and Hubbard knew that. Moreover, he knew that his interviewer knew. Yet he lied anyways, contradicting himself -- and actually seemed to believe what he said at all times. That's the scary part.

This recent ABC investigation would tend to buttress Xenophon's allegation. Check out the "salute the dog" section! Permalink

Why didn't the United States agree to have Khaled Sheikh Mohammed tried in an international war crimes tribunal? Perhaps because the U.S. does not want to lose control of the proceedings. If control were lost, certain little-discussed aspects of the case might come out -- such as the fact that the CIA has been holding KSM's young children hostage for years. As a released document revealed, the CIA told KSM that his children would be killed.

Given the circumstances, we may expect a quick guilty plea. Certain right-wing pundits are screaming that KSM could engineer a successful defense. Such claims are pure propaganda.
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Reversal of Fortune: Mexicans are sending money to their poor relations in the United States.

Also in Chiapas, a poor state that sends many migrants to the United States, María del Carmen Montufar has pooled money with her husband and other family members to wire financial assistance to her daughter Candelaria in North Carolina.

At one small bank in Chiapas that used to see money flowing in from the United States, more money is going out than coming in.

So what's Obama gonna do? He's going to go on a fact-finding mission -- a nationwide tour -- one which will take months to complete. (Thanks, lambert.)

With the nation's unemployment rate at its highest level in 26 years, President Obama plans to bring together CEOs, small business owners and financial experts to sound out ideas for continuing to expand the economy and create jobs.

In other words, he's going to go around the country looking for more YAFs to talk to. Well, it beats actually doing something.

And what's a YAF? That's my new pet acronym: YAF -- Yet Another Friedmanite. (As in Milton Friedman.)

Wherever you go in the United States, whenever you turn on the radio, you run into a YAF. You can find pro-war YAFs and anti-war YAFs, insider YAFs and counter-culture YAFs, right-wing YAFs and left-wing YAFs, atheist YAFs and fundamentalist YAFs. The Obama administration is at least 80% YAF. The anti-Obama teabag movement is 100% YAF. YAFs are the thesis and the antithesis -- and thus any conceivable synthesis must be a YAF synthesis. They are on every side of nearly every issue, yet they all serve the same purpose: They exist to tell you that Keynesianism is the problem, not the solution.

After what the YAFs did to Russia, Chile, Iraq and the United States, you'd think that their Miltonian movement would be discredited by now. But the YAFs, through some YAFfy magic, always manage to present themselves as the exemplars of an untried ideal. They've been spewing YAFfiness for decades, yet they always convey the shock of the new. And every disaster they have created is ascribed not to Friedmanism but to the lack thereof.

Your home's on fire? Pour on some gas. It'll put the flames out -- or so the YAFs keep telling us.

A subsidiary of the YAF infestation is the YAL (Yet Another Libertarian) phenomenon. The internet presences who foisted Obama on the world -- Moulitsas, Sullivan, Aravosis, DAH-link Arianna, and possibly Marshall -- all began as YALs. Maybe they still are.

China: Paul Krugman is one of the few prominent non-YAF voices out there. You should read his recent piece on China's intentionally weakened currency.

So picture this: month after month of headlines juxtaposing soaring U.S. trade deficits and Chinese trade surpluses with the suffering of unemployed American workers. If I were the Chinese government, I’d be really worried about that prospect.

I'd be even more worried if I were an unemployed American worker. Oh, wait a minute: I am.

Unfortunately, the Chinese don’t seem to get it: rather than face up to the need to change their currency policy, they’ve taken to lecturing the United States, telling us to raise interest rates and curb fiscal deficits — that is, to make our unemployment problem even worse.

And that's exactly what will happen. Obama is under all sorts of pressure not to institute another stimulus. Instead, all the conventional wisdom spewers insist that NOW NOW NOW is the time fix our unfixable deficit. And we need to raise interest rates NOW NOW NOW in order to fight inflation -- which doesn't exist. All of which means that SOON SOON SOON we will have 25% unemployment, maybe worse.

Okay. So if nobody in this country has a job, who will buy all that Chinese-produced crap filling up our Wal-Marts?

Or maybe...

(Let us recall our first story, the one about Mexicans bailing out their relatives in the U.S.)

...maybe the Chinese want to keep the yuan weak in order to make sure that Chinese WalMarts don't fill up American-produced crap.

Did you know that there are WalMarts in China? The photo to your left depicts one in Dongguan.

I spent some time this morning doing a Google Earth flyover of Dongguan and Guangshou and environs. Yes, I know that there were some very sizable layoffs there recently. Still, just about everything there looks prosperous, sleek, modern, clean, well-designed, impressively-sized and newly-built. How is China able to do it? Maybe because the political culture has managed to stay relatively YAF-free. If we want to fix the trade imbalance, we need to flood the place with Chicago School graduates -- pronto.

Meanwhile, folks in Mexico are sending relief aid to their poor relations in the U.S...

Added note: Wow. Public sculpture in Dongguan is pretty hot. Although the Chinese may be moving ahead of us, at least one Chinese fellow seems happy to be behind.

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This blog normally publishes non-political material on the weekends, which means that this video arrives some 90 minutes over the limit line. But I just had to share this YouTube discovery, because it's the trippiest thing since Inland Empire. Does anyone out there know who put this sequence together...? (Feel free to 'shroom while watching, but don't hold me responsible for the consequences.) Permalink

I'm going to attempt an answer to a question I posed a couple of posts down:

Let us posit an alternate universe in which single payer, or something happily close to it, is under discussion right now in Congress. How would we handle the question of abortion?

I would want the procedure to be both legal and covered by nationalized health insurance. Yet I can muster up some sympathy for those who say that they do not want their tax dollars to support what they consider to be murder. Can you, as a mental exercise, cobble together an arrangement?

Many of my readers won't see the problem here. They will respond: Keep abortion legal, let the (posited) national health insurance program pay for it, and tell any complainers: "Suck that."

As quixote at The Confluence says of the instantly notorious Stupak amendment:

What if the amendment read, “Hair straightening is unnatural and immoral. No medical costs associated with complications can be paid for using any Federal tax dollars.” Would he be as tolerant of that viewpoint? Male circumcision is an unnecessary procedure whose only health benefit comes from compensating for poor hygiene (or, in the case of AIDS, from the unnaturally thickened skin of the glans). Would he be as quick to understand people with moral objections to the deformation of men?

Those examples are meant to be humorous, so I suppose it would be churlish to point out that circumcision prevents cancer of the penis (for which Dr. Edward Scissorhands can perform the only known cure), while the main complication of hair straightening is a chemical burn -- which, though rarely serious, stings like the devil. (I once had crazy ideas about taming my curly and gravity-defying beard. We will not discuss the results.)

As a matter of political -- not medical -- reality, we cannot equate abortion to any other procedure. On this topic, tempers reach surface-of-the-sun temperatures. Murder has been done. The national division of opinion is roughly even, and both sides refuse to grant the other even the faintest shred of moral legitimacy. The anti-abortion advocates have just as much contempt for their foes as their foes have for them. No-one will ever agree to disagree.

Partisans on both sides have but one message for their foes: "We're right; you're wrong; suck that."

You're a fool if you think that single-payer legislation -- already a contentious issue -- will come to pass if pro-abortion advocates take a "suck that" attitude toward anti-abortion advocates. It just won't happen.

Don't hit me with "should" arguments: I'm not talking should. It just won't happen.

Politics is the art of the possible, and your "suck that" fantasy simply is not possible. If, in your view, there can never be single payer legislation without "suck that," then single-payer will never, ever happen.

I don't like this situation, but I recognize its existence. Nevertheless, I think that any national health insurance scheme should pay for abortions.

What, then, to do?

First, let's figure out how much money we are talking about. There are under a million abortions in any given year in the United States. The cost is small: About $200-$400. Since a nationalized health insurance scheme will save money, let's use the lower figure. The overall cost of all abortions each year will be under $200 million. That's a piddling amount when compared to the overall cost of health care in the United States -- which, by my rough calculation, is somewhere on the order of (yow!) $2.1 trillion.

So it's just a matter of raising $200 mill. Or rather: It's a matter of making sure that the $200 mill won't come out of the pockets of those who cannot tolerate the thought of abortion's legality.

My proposed scheme is simple: Two national health insurance plans -- Plan A, for people who think that abortion should be legal, and Plan B, for those who think otherwise. Both plans will be paid for by taxes. Plan B -- the anti-abortion plan -- will cost less than Plan A. How much less? The difference will come to maybe a buck-fifty a year. In other words: If you are anti-abortion, at tax time you will get to keep six extra quarters, give or take two bits, and you can rest assured that not one penny of your money will go toward an operation you find abhorrent.

Won't everyone join Plan B, in order to save those sheckles? Nah.

The amount of money is negligible, and those who want to maintain the legality and availability of abortion are both numerous and passionate. Remember, we need to raise a mere $200 million. I think we can get to that goal easily.

What about women in the Plan B club who have a sudden change of heart due to an unwanted pregnancy? Let them switch over to Plan A at will; they may then have the abortion. But make sure they understand that they will be paying the extra $1.50 for the rest of their lives. They're on the A team now.

And don't presume that only women will join the Plan A club. A lot of men want to keep all options open, if only because a lot of men know what it's like to regret a drunken tryst. I believe that there will be just as many males as females who choose A.

Some of you are probably fuming. "If the anti-abortionists can withhold taxes on their pet issue, then why should I have to pay for our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan? That's unfair!"

Damn right it's unfair. I freely admit it.

But look at it this way: The current health care reform bill is a botch which will probably fail to pass the Senate. The reform debate will then go back to square one. And even if Obama does sign some sort of hideous "health" bill, the new plan will soon piss off most Americans, and many will demand reform of the reform. Again, we'll be back at square one.

At that moment, single-payer advocates must have their act together.

They will have a tough time being heard, because the conservative propaganda machine will shout with a million voices: "We tried socialized medicine and it didn't work!" Nevertheless, we must continue to fight for single-payer, for the simple reason that no other system will work.

The odds are already against us. Why would we want to do anything that would make the job even tougher?

If you insist on your "suck that" fantasy out of principle, then single-payer will never happen. It should, but it won't. If, on the other hand, you can bend your principles just enough to allow for my "Plan A and Plan B" scheme, then the impossible dream instantly becomes an almost-impossible dream.

Added note: I think some feminists will presume that only women will pay the extra dollar or two that Plan A requires, what with all men being pigs and all. According to this Pew poll, Democratic men and women supported abortion rights in roughly equal numbers -- until 2008, when a nine percent gender gap occurred. What's the reason for the gap? I don't know; one can only speculate. Maybe the poll numbers will be even again next year.

Now here's an interesting figure: Among men overall (Dem and Rep), 52% supported abortion in 2007. The number is now down to 44%. That's an eight point spread. A noted above, the drop was nine points among Democratic men. In other words, support for abortion dropped further among male Dems than among male Republicans. I wonder why?

Barely 50% of the women in this country support abortion -- a five point drop since 2007. The overall support for abortion rights is now a mere 47%, a worrisome figure. I don't think these numbers provide abortion supporters with a position of strength, frankly. I don't think 47 percent provides a good foundation for anyone who wants to say: "I think Pat Robertson should pay every bit as much as I do for nationalized on-demand abortions."

Come on. The difference between Plan A and Plan B is only a couple of bucks a year -- tops. It's not that big a deal!

Added added note: I looked again at the Pew poll. Interesting numbers on the religious front: Among evangelical Protestants, 23% support abortion rights and 71% say abortion should be illegal. (No surprise there.) Among those awful, awful Cat-licks, opinion is evenly split: 45% fer, 45% agin. Those numbers mirror the roughly even split we see in the overall population. Yet when liberals and feminists assign blame for atrocities like the Stupak amendment, guess which religious group receives the most venomous insults?

Catholicism. It's the religion everyone loves to hate! Permalink

I have to applaud Barack Obama for calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the saintly freedom fighter of Burma/Myanmar. Is this the first time any U.S. president has mentioned her by name?
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1. What if? Let us posit an alternate universe in which single payer, or something happily close to it, is under discussion right now in Congress. How would we handle the question of abortion?

I would want the procedure to be both legal and covered by nationalized health insurance. Yet I can muster up some sympathy for those who say that they do not want their tax dollars to support what they consider to be murder. Can you, as a mental exercise, cobble together an arrangement?

(Granted, our tax dollars are being used to support murder in Afghanistan and Iraq right now.)

2. Can Kucinich make it good? Dennis Kucinich wants his state-by-state single-payer approach to become part of a final deal with the Senate. Won't happen. Ah, but what if? Would a bad bill suddenly become worthy of support?

I say yes, it would. Of course, California probably would go single-payer early. If you live in Montana, you may have a differing attitude.

3. Want a filibuster? I do! I hope that the level of support in the Senate for health care reform is above 50 but below 60. To me, a number in that range would be ideal. Why? Because I don't much care for this bill -- but I do want to see a real, old-school filibuster. You know, one with Joe Lieberman entertaining us with a day-long telling of the Aristocrats. That kind of filibuster.

Why? Because a real filibuster would allow the Democrats to amend the rules of the Senate itself, in which case we would have, literally, the filibuster to end all filibusters. I've talked about this before. To change the rules, a two-thirds vote of all the Senators present is necessary -- and the whole point of being a filibusterer is to keep the opposite party (in this case, the Dems) in the room while most members of your own party (the Republicans) get to go home for booze and a snooze.

Picture it: Two-thirds of the senators vote, the rules are changed, and the very idea of a filibuster is gone, baby gone. We would once again have rule by a simple majority. That's the only way to get things done.

(Of course, that sitch would have drawbacks. In 2011, we may have a tea-soaked Republican Senate. The Dems would have no filibuster power against nutjobs who want to declare war on the Illuminati, confer citizenship on angels, and put Jesus on Mount Rushmore.)

4. A T-shirt? You guys serious? People have suggested that the "MS-Led" cartoon (scroll down) would make a nice t-shirt. I tried the t-shirt thing before; it did not go over well. In order to have a company manufacture and ship shirts from your own design, one must charge somewhere on the order of 20 bucks. I've never paid more than $10. Of course, I'm a cheap bastard. Permalink

Many disappointed Obama supporters maintain that the president has betrayed the progressive agenda he once espoused. I would counter that he never was a liberal -- he merely played one on TV.

One classic example: Obama's multi-facial attitude toward Iran.

His campaign duplicity has gained new relevance after the recent federal seizure of various mosques and a skyscraper in New York, due to alleged covert ties to Iran.

In this earlier post, we looked into Obama's shifting stances on Iran. I shall recap.

During his ever-so-brief senate career, Barack Obama co-sponsored something called the "Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007," which did not become law.This act was controversial because it identified the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

As you may recall, most prog-blog commentators considered any such identification reckless. The Revolutionary Guard is a national army, and we are supposed to be at war with terrorism. Thus, the act technically could be used to justify war with the Iranian army.

To placate leftish critics, Obama pulled off a neat trick. He did not reverse his co-sponsorship. He did not express regret or admit error. He did not really do anything. Instead, he gave campaign speeches opposing the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, which offered the same IRG = terror equation.

Those speeches sufficed to make the prog-bloggers happy. The bots did not notice that all Obama ever offered were words. Just words.

When it came time for action, Barack Obama made a point of not showing up for a vote on the Kyl-Lieberman resolution. In other words, he refused to take a stance that might come to haunt him in the general election.

It gets worse: Then-Senator Hillary Clinton passed around a statement intended to make clear that the Bush administration should not construe the Kyl-Lieberman amendment as an excuse for war. (At the time, everyone feared that Mad Dick and Little George wanted to justify heaving bombs at Tehran.) Hillary asked Barack Obama to sign that letter.

He wouldn't.

Nevertheless, many progressives formed the bizarre hallucination that it was Hillary who wanted war with Iran, while Obama (in their eyes) stood for peace and diplomacy.

When ambassador Joe Wilson (the husband of Valerie Plame/Wilson, who had been screwed over by the Bushies) scored candidate Obama for his Janus-like stance on Iran, the Obot brigades responded by smearing Wilson and his courageous wife. Daily Kos published a particularly mind-boggling reaction -- a comment which reflects the sentiment then prevailing within "progressive" circles:

Obama will NOT let the criminality of government remain the status quo.....Clinton would of covered up for Bush and the CIA etc like her husband did, Obama will NOT and Larry and his buddies and Joe and Valeries budddies may just be caught for whatever criminal acts they were part of.....

(The "Larry" here is, of course, Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst with whom I've fallen into severe disagreement. That contretemps is irrelevant to our story.) The above-quoted words were published in mid-2008. I still have no idea what "criminal acts" are to be laid at the feet of the honorable and brave Wilsons.

When Obama attained power, he got his revenge against Joe Wilson. Obama directed his Justice Department to halt the Wilsons' civil lawsuit against Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, who conspired to reveal Valerie Wilson's CIA employment. In essence, Obama provided legal cover for the chancred and leprous asses of Dubya's most vile henchmen.

And how did the progressives react? For example, did Randi Rhodes -- who spent years feasting on the Wilson/Plame scandal -- denounce Obama for siding with Dubya's evildoers against the people she had once championed?

No, she did not. At least not within my hearing. (If you know otherwise, please enlighten me.)

And that, my friends, is Barack Obama. He is a man who ran against the Bush/Cheney legacy, yet ended up protecting Bush and Cheney. He is a man who, on the issue of Iran, told lefties what they wanted to hear, yet consistently refused to match action to rhetoric.

Now Obama has taken what may be a provocative step against Iran -- and his actions seem to have won some very grudging respect from the likes of Michelle Malkin. Obama will maintain sanctions against Iran. The neoconservative Wall Street Journal is demanding that Obama end all attempts at diplomacy with Iran -- and the current federal seizures give the administration political cover for doing exactly as the WSJ prescribes.

Meanwhile, we have this disturbing note from DEBKAfile (that is to say, from Mossad):

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama focused on the single subject of Iran when they met in Washington Monday, Nov. 9 - as did Netanyahu and French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, Wednesday, Nov. 11. Iran also occupied the meeting between defense minster Ehud Barak and US defense secretary Robert Gates Monday. DEBKAfile’s Washington sources disclose that briefings to the media and joint communiqués were disallowed for the sake of blacking out the content of the conversations Israeli leaders held in Washington and Paris.

Leaked reports that the Palestinian issue and Mahmoud Abbas’ future were discussed in Washington and peace talks with Syria in Paris were window-dressing, as were the power games widely reported as leading up to the Netanyahu’s reception at the White House.

The conversation in Sarkozy’s private apartment at the Elysee was a continuation of Netanyahu’s talks with Obama two days earlier and marked their coalescence around the next steps on Iran.

Back home, the defense minister stressed the importance of “not discounting the peace signals coming of late from Syria” and said that “many barriers fell” at the Netanyahu-Obama meeting “recreating a good foundation for renewing the peace process and reaching accord with our Palestinian neighbors.”

This statement was part of the smoke screen set up by mutual consent to conceal the content of Barak and the prime minister’s overseas meetings. It was necessary to addressing the minister’s need to bolster his shaky position as leader of the left-leaning Labor party and lift Israel’s image in Europe which is fixated on the Palestinian issue.

At the same time, a very senior American official told DEBKAfile that his description of falling barriers between President Obama and prime minister was spot on and deserved a full stop.

After reading that, the timing of the New York seizures makes rather more sense, doesn't it?

Obama says that the recent federal action resulted from an investigation he inherited from Bush. Perhaps. We shall see.

What we know is this: As a candidate, Obama spoke like a prudent peacenik on Iran, yet his actions have always lurched toward neo-conservatism. His foreign policy mentor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, may be considered a neo-con of a certain type. Zbig is not Ledeen -- he's something different -- but that doesn't make him one of the good guys.

Obama's sponsorship of that once-notorious legislation (the one which placed the "terrorist" label on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) makes the following piece of speculation worth pondering:

So is the Obama Administration involved in the attacks on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard conference in Sistan-Baluchistan?

Note: Sistan-Baluchistan is a war-torn province of Iran, the home of a Sunni insurgency against the Shi'ite regime in Tehran. (It's also a key area in the heroin trade.) Intriguingly, an Al Qaeda-linked group named Jundallah has been credited with the attack on the Iranian Guard. If the Obama administration was (as the writer implies, and as the Iranians have plainly stated) the secret sponsor behind an attack carried out by an Al Qaeda ally -- well. This movie just became really intriguing.

One of the main forces behind the foreign policy of President Obama is Brzezinski, a realist and someone who has talked about Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan all becoming destabilized, including in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2007. The concept of a geo-political “black hole” is also his. Also, the Iranian government has categorically stated that the U.S. and Britain where the forces behind the October 18, 2009 attacks on a dialogue amongst Sistan-Baluchistan’s Shiite Muslim and Sunni Muslim leaders sponsored by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Most likely the answer is yes. While the U.S. government is also negotiating with Tehran, America has not ended its covert meddling and destabilization operations against Iran. Barack Obama is continuing the last American administration’s proxy war on Iran from the Iranian border with Iraq to Sistan-Baluchistan.

Could proxy war lead to war war? Indeed it could.

Where, I wonder, is Hillary in all of this? Permalink