Showing posts tagged politics

Hubris documentary, critical of Bush’s case for war, finds ironic home at MSNBC

At Mother Jones, David Corn writes about a new documentary film called Hubris — it’s hosted by Rachel Maddow and based on a book by Corn and Michael Isikoff that offers “a behind-the-scenes account of how Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their lieutenants deployed false claims, iffy intelligence, and unsupported hyperbole to win popular backing for the invasion (of Iraq).”

The film airs tonight on MSNBC, a network with leadership that has traditionally been all too eager to bow to the demands of American conservatives near and far.

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Journalist Peter Maass in The Atlantic on Zero Dark Thirty: I agree that the movie’s depiction of the CIA is regrettably uncritical; let’s remember, the CIA provided false evidence for going to war against Iraq, it tortured prisoners in secret jails and sent others to third countries where they would be tortured (and covered up as much of this as possible), and it is now engaged in a covert program using aerial drones to kill people who have not been convicted of any crime—and in these attacks women and children are often killed. The film fails to consider the notion that the CIA and the intelligence industry as a whole, rather than being solutions to what threatens us, might be part of the problem. Jane Mayer writing about the film for The New Yorker: “Zero Dark Thirty,” which opens across the country next month, is a pulse-quickening film that spends its first half hour or so depicting a fictionalized version of the Bush Administration’s secret U.S. interrogation program. In reality, the C.I.A.’s program of calibrated cruelty was deemed so illegal, and so immoral, that the director of the F.B.I. withdrew his personnel rather than have them collaborate with it, and the top lawyer at the Pentagon laid his career on the line in an effort to stop a version of the program from spreading to the armed forces.

Journalist Peter Maass in The Atlantic on Zero Dark Thirty:

I agree that the movie’s depiction of the CIA is regrettably uncritical; let’s remember, the CIA provided false evidence for going to war against Iraq, it tortured prisoners in secret jails and sent others to third countries where they would be tortured (and covered up as much of this as possible), and it is now engaged in a covert program using aerial drones to kill people who have not been convicted of any crime—and in these attacks women and children are often killed. The film fails to consider the notion that the CIA and the intelligence industry as a whole, rather than being solutions to what threatens us, might be part of the problem.

Jane Mayer writing about the film for The New Yorker:

“Zero Dark Thirty,” which opens across the country next month, is a pulse-quickening film that spends its first half hour or so depicting a fictionalized version of the Bush Administration’s secret U.S. interrogation program. In reality, the C.I.A.’s program of calibrated cruelty was deemed so illegal, and so immoral, that the director of the F.B.I. withdrew his personnel rather than have them collaborate with it, and the top lawyer at the Pentagon laid his career on the line in an effort to stop a version of the program from spreading to the armed forces.

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In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as “deeply troubling”, army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as “military-age males”, had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.
“US military facing fresh questions over targeting of children in Afghanistan.” Karen McVeigh, The Guardian 

Politico’s “highly toxic, incestuous variant of access journalism”

Alex Pareene discusses Politico’s disdain for substance or investigative journalism in The Baffler:

Nevertheless, there is a specific Politico ethos, a worldview, and a style of writing and reporting that sets the Harris-VandeHei collaboration apart from the institutions the paper grew out of. It’s a product of the worst of Washington in a particularly awful era for Washington. In this abject little tip sheet, a moment of profound elite self-regard and complete disconnect from the rest of the nation has found its outlet.

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At this point, there’s wide agreement that the GOP faces a profound demographic problem—its longtime coalition of middle-aged whites is not enough to win national elections. Rush Limbaugh’s lament is correct: Republicans are (increasingly) outnumbered.
“The Long Shadow of George W. Bush,” Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect

Fox “News” campaigning nationally for GOP

“According to a Media Matters review, at least 32 Fox News figures have backed Republican efforts in more than 300 instances during the 2011-2012 election cycle. The Fox News personalities have campaigned for Republicans nationally and in more than 40 states.” 

“30+ Fox News Hosts and Contributors Who Are Campaigning for Republicans,” Eric Hananoki, Media Matters

See also Eric Alterman’s column, “Just What Exactly is Fox News?” (CAP, October, 2010) — An excerpt:

This is a mistake. Fox is something new—something for which we do not yet have a word. It provides almost no actual journalism. Instead it gives ideological guidance to the Republican Party and millions of its supporters, attacking its opponents and keeping its supporters in line. And it does so at a hefty profit, thereby turning itself into the political equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.

Think Tank, a new Top Cow comic series about a scientist who works for an actual defense contractor, couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. The first issue even references drones, the unmanned aerial vehicles that the U.S. Air Force and CIA have been deploying for decades, but have never before been as common a component of our foreign policy than they are in 2012. By April of this year, President Obama had ordered five times as many drone strikes as George W. Bush had in office. I wrote about Obama’s drone program and its timely mention in Think Tank for PopMatters. View high resolution

Think Tank, a new Top Cow comic series about a scientist who works for an actual defense contractor, couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time. The first issue even references drones, the unmanned aerial vehicles that the U.S. Air Force and CIA have been deploying for decades, but have never before been as common a component of our foreign policy than they are in 2012. By April of this year, President Obama had ordered five times as many drone strikes as George W. Bush had in office. I wrote about Obama’s drone program and its timely mention in Think Tank for PopMatters.

Sending out Don, Rudy & Dick

William Saletan at Slate reminds readers which party ignored a memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”:

The difference between the failures of Sept. 11, 2001, and the failures of Sept. 11, 2012 isn’t just 2,900 deaths. It’s the ferocity with which Republicans, when they held the White House, denounced their critics as unpatriotic.

Read more at Slate.

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It’s an upside-down version of life, and it is not innocuous. When desperation leads political critics of the president to discredit important nonpolitical institutions — including the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Reserve and the Congressional Budget Office — the damage can be long-lasting. If voters come to mistrust the most basic functions of government, the resulting cynicism can destroy the basic compact of citizenship.
“Conspiracy World,” Editors, The New York Times

An “unforgivable” debate performance

Mitt Romney could very easily become our next Ronald Reagan, a president who cobbles together an immediate recovery while inflicting incalculable, long-term damage on us all. And that’s why the performance President Obama handed in last night was unforgivable.

This is the strongest assessment I’ve seen of President Obama’s dismal and irresponsible domestic policy debate performance. I don’t honestly believe, as Harper’s’ Kevin Baker asserts here, that Obama is willfully surrendering the office of the President to a Republican challenger. I do believe, however, that defending his record wasn’t, politically, the only action that needed to be taken, but that he is responsible for identifying why Romney’s, and worse, Paul Ryan’s ideas are toxic for this country. But Obama did nothing of the sort.

Kevin Baker’s byline appeared in the New York Times yesterday, too — read him on the GOP’s disdain for cities, and its reflecting “a terrible arrogance here that has ramifications well beyond the Republicans’ electoral prospects.”