Psychopolitik 2.0

…is what the headline should’ve been for this:

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly has all but declared war against the DailyKos website, writing about a “vicious far-left web site called the DailyKos, one of the worst examples of hatred America has to offer.”

O’Reilly also said of some of the postings on DailyKos: “this is hate of the worst order. It’s like the Ku Klux Klan. It’s like the Nazi party. There’s no difference here. People should die.” (emphasis mine)

Now, I have my disagreements with the Kos crew. Personally I think an alarming amount of them are closed-minded, and they tend to treat partisan politics — which is pretty much a sham anyway — waaaaay too seriously. On top of that, most buy into the pop-politics concept that corporate dominance is the inevitable result of a free market & government dominance is the solution (my shot at thoroughly debunking that would be here), and shout down anyone who dares challenge that view. A few brave souls (Adam & Logan from FreedomDemocrats, & Jay Silas) post there & actively question that pseudo-wisdom; I myself have enough scars from fruitless internet shouting matches elsewhere to where I’ve retired from going into the fray like that. So, it’s clear that me & Kos ain’t exactly friends. But equating their comments with Nazis & the Klan?

Y’know, last time I checked, Kos wasn’t going around bombing black churches, murdering civil rights activists, & rounding up Jews to be executed…

Hey, kids!  Y’know that funny li’l term “subprime lending” you might’ve overheard while flipping through channels?  Well, find a comfy chair and take a seat, cuz Mr Nystrom is gonna tell you all about it…

Corporatists have been feeling even froggier than usual lately:

Fifty years ago, more than 30 percent of private-sector workers were organized. That share today is 8 percent. Globalization and the new, technology-driven economy have contributed to the decline, but advanced economies in Europe survive these same developments and still have union coverage rates of around 80 percent.

Much of the falloff in the United States is not due to the “new” economy or waning worker interest; it’s instead the result of illegal intimidation by employers. Our recent analysis of cases brought before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees union-management relations in most of the private sector, shows that employers illegally fire as many as 1 in 5 union organizers. […]

The National Labor Relations Act (NRLB) makes it illegal to intimidate or fire workers for union activity. Yet, according to our study of data from the NLRB, there has been a steep rise in illegal firings of pro-union workers in the last few years. Currently, 1 in 53 is dumped during an election campaign, more than 50 percent higher than the chance of being fired in the late 1990s. (emphasis mine)

They shouldn’t be fired anyway — if the employers can organize for their interests, why not the workers?  However, that they’re ESPECIALLY aggressive about it now, smacking down labor movements like Mannie Fresh smacks drum machine pads, says a lot.

Needless to say, every action has a reaction…

Interestingly, union membership has actually increased in the public sector. Whereas the private sector — the bulk of the U.S. economy — has seen unionization fall by three-quarters over the last 50 years, public-sector union membership has tripled over the same period to about 36 percent. Persistent, illegal activity by employers in the private sector explains this disparity. Illegal firings exist in the public sector too, of course, but they are far less prevalent. Civil service protections that most private sector workers don’t enjoy ensure that firings are more onerous for the government than they are for a business.

It used to be (long before my time, unfortunately) that organized labor was generally ambivalent about government, and in many cases hostile to it.  Now, thanks to the nonsensical classing of public government workers as on a higher level simultaneously while attacking people who don’t get their checks directly from the government, a new labor class is rising — one fiercely loyal to the State, and self-perpetuating.  These are people for who the seeping of politics into everything is a net gain, because it keeps them employed & multiplies their ranks.

Nothing personal here, but since in the long run I would rather that the central authority that they kneel before not exist, this has to be said: Government labor can kiss my ass.

Rogue agents: not just for crappy video games anymore!

The Justice Department’s Inspector General, along with the FBI, are investigating an office that sent fake, emergency letters to telecoms requesting phone records despite not having applied for the future subpoenas promised in the letters and not having the authority to request the records themselves, according to the Inspector General’s office.

That information largely confirms a a Wired News story from last week, which revealed that top FBI officials told privacy groups that a criminal investigation of the office was underway and that individuals had been given immunity in exchange for testimony.

If the investigation looks into possible criminal violations of fraud statutes or a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, it would mark the first known investigation of government employees for violations of the Patriot Act. […]

The Communications Analysis Unit, a part of the FBI’s counter-terrorism branch that is tasked with helping agents make sense of electronic communications records, sent more than 700 so-called “exigent letters” to telecoms requesting phone records of more than 3000 phone numbers.

According to the current head of the unit, the office has no authority (.pdf) to send the letters themselves, included false promises in the letters that subpoenas had already been applied for, and did not follow-up to make sure that proper legal documents were later sent.

Considering how screwy things have gotten, allow me to speculate for a moment: does it seem plausible to anyone else that this rogue sector may be controlled from outside, and they were just following marching orders of someone beyond their status?

From elsewhere:

-Anonymous Liberal has an MSM headline-bias debunking.

-Ron Chusid brings us Hillary exhibiting late remorse re: medical marijuana. Or craven political calculation that happens to lean to a decent result for once. Pick one.

-Cunning Realist offers up some inconvenient questions.

-Glenn Greenwald brings a fist of intellectual rage with General Petraeus’ name on it.

-Last but not least, Brad has…well, nothing if Bush has anything to say about it…

If you’re a big-time stock broker, you’re probably doing pretty good right now.  For you, the US economy couldn’t be better.  Why, look at the Dow, it’s hitting record highs!  Everything is humming along, the sun is shining, friggin’ bluebirds are chirping outside your high-rise office window, wonderful days…

The average American, however, is on the downstroke.  The cost of living is increasing, wages are stagnant, and the next time you hear them say on the news how well the economy is performing you’re gonna kick a field goal with your TV.  Why the gulf in interpretation?

Simple: money supply.  Those dollars created out of thin air have to get into circulation somehow, and that way is through the big banks.  From there, they’re used for (over)investment, making demand seem higher than it actually is.  The government thinks you’re not spending enough money, so they’re making it easier…by making things cost more.

It’s quite obvious from the results of all this that such currency manipulation helps the wealthy at the expense of the poor.  So why do so few on the Left seem interested in monetary policy?

Ass-covering 101:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suppressed warnings from its own Gulf coast field workers since the middle of 2006 about suspected health problems that may be linked to elevated levels of formaldehyde gas released in FEMA-provided trailers, lawmakers said today.

At a hearing this morning of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, investigators released internal e-mails indicating that FEMA lawyers rejected environmental testing out of fear that the agency would then become legally liable if health problems emerged among as many as 120,000 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lived in trailers.

FEMA’s Office of General Counsel “has advised that we do not do testing,” because this “would imply FEMA’s ownership of this issue,” wrote a FEMA logistics specialist on June 16, 2006, three months after news reports surfaced about the possible effects of the invisible cancer-causing compound and one month after the agency was sued. (emphasis mine)

Gee, ya think they own the issue now?  Or are we to believe the Formaldehyde Gnomes snuck in and sabotaged the whole thing?

Comments work again. Also, I’m going to be testing adding a Reddit link to posts.

Edit: Buttons kick ass.

A few facts:

• Roughly half of the military spending of the world: U.S.
• The US spends more on its military than the countries with the next largest military budgets COMBINED.
• The monetary cost of the war in Iraq is over 400 BILLION, and going up by the second.

Ok, got that? Now, with that in mind, explain this article showing that this same military, already going through money like it was water, dilly-dallied and refused to get IED-resistant vehicles for years, despite IEDs being the biggest threat to the soldiers there. I am not liable if your head explodes while you do so, btw.

It should go without saying that I want this all to end, and think it absolutely ridiculous the amount of money wasted on killing people more efficiently. That said, within this scenario, such a decision is unconscionable. If you have the money to overpay Halliburton & glorified mercenary groups like Blackwater, you have the money to get better fucking armor. If the facts of imperialism and the inherent dehumanizing of yourself and millions of people you’ve never met aren’t enough to convince any sane person that joining the military is stupid, then the fact that they make decisions like these had better be.

BTW: What the hell happened at USA Today where they’re printing stuff like that? Did they grow some King Kong balls as of late or what?

There are meaningful arguments to be had about the media, and also the ideal of an informed populace. This is not one of them:

Greater access to media, ironically, has reduced the share of Americans who are politically informed. The most significant effect of more media choice is not the wider dissemination of political news but mounting inequality in political involvement. Some people follow news more closely than in the past, but many others avoid it altogether.

First of all, like it or not, people will in the end decide for themselves if they wish to pay attention to the outside world. I’d like for more to consider it — obviously — but unanimous participation is impossible, some will ignore it, no matter what.

That said, the author here is already conflating mainstream media participation with the general state of being informed, as if you know squat unless you watch the evening news…

Now that Americans can choose among countless channels and Web sites, the role of motivation is key. Many people’s reasons for watching television or surfing the Web do not include learning about politics. Today’s media users seek out the content they really like. Unfortunately for a political system that benefits from an informed citizenry, few people really like the news.

Consider the broadcast networks’ desperate struggle to hold on to an ever-shrinking news audience. The problem is not that shallow, loud or negative coverage of politics causes viewers to tune out in disgust. It’s that for many people shallow, loud entertainment offers greater satisfaction, and it always has. Now, such entertainment is available around the clock and in unprecedented variety. Television viewers have not abandoned the evening news out of frustration — they just found something more enjoyable. Even Katie Couric can’t stanch that trend.

Now, I tend to overwhelmingly get my news from online. Along with the usual sources, I like to search for background info on my own, partly out of pure curiosity, but mostly because I don’t think taking popular media at face value is a good idea. As far as the majors go, the “choice” is actually much smaller than commonly portrayed, as each of the Big Boys is owned by a few conglomerates, and they all tend to follow the exact same stories w/ the exact same slant (FoxNews only wears it on their sleeve more, the difference isn’t much). I don’t watch the evening news at all, and when I have CNN on, it’s either in the background for possible real-time post fodder, or in the same sense that makes people slow down and gawk when they see an accident on the freeway. The only TV news show I would ever watch for the show itself and not the expectation of unintentional tragicomedy would be Countdown, and I don’t get that channel anymore.

That’s how I deal with problems of pop media. Others just ignore it completely. Among those that ignore it, many do so as an extension of withholding a sense of legitimacy from the ruling elite, feeling that since they tend to unjustifiably back up the status quo anyway there’s no reason to take them seriously. I’m just fine with the latter group, because instead of being ignorant (like they’re portrayed here), they’re actually saying “ok, I’ve seen enough”.

The flip side of the entertainment fan who doesn’t have to watch the news is the news junkie who now can follow it constantly. A relatively small segment of the population — my own research indicates it’s less than a fifth — specializes in news content. But such people consume so much of it that the total amount of time Americans spend watching, reading and listening to news has not declined even though many people have tuned out. […]

Greater media choice is both gratifying and a powerful political asset for those people who read op-eds and then move on to NPR, Instapundit and Wolf Blitzer. […]

If those are his idea of alternate sources, he’s even dumber than I thought.  But I digress…

So, some people who are already predisposed to paying attention can now take what the media tosses them & give to it the intellectual equivalent of a full-cavity search, some people who’ve consciously written it off can continue to do so, and the rest have more to entertain themselves. And the problem here is _____?

Edit: For more WaPo-specific slaggery on this, Vache Folle has you covered.