Plurality (48% of voters) favors censuring Bush for wiretaps

Here's an item not covered in the Washington Post, which is moving on from the wiretap issue, an issue which involves blatant violation of the law by the Bush-Cheney administration, and a coverup. Insider Washington is already ready to make this a non-issue. Down the memory hole, folks! Don't pay any attention to that ugly public opinion over in the corner, Just keep looking at the big Wizard pics on FOX News.

Of course, there is some good news in this polling for "President Bush." (See this pollling information .) Only 43% of voters favor impeachment. Yes, Bush still has a bare imajority of 50% who do not yet believe he should be impeached.

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who introduced a resolution calling for censuring Bush for illegal wiretapping, got a fear reaction from some Senate Democrats. Feingold asked "Why would people cower at a time when the president's numbers are so low?"

I ask the bipartisan question -- why is anyone in the Senate, of either party, defending a President with so little credibility -- someone who has clearly wasted two enormous political gifts -- the national reaction to 9/11, and a massive propaganda machine, funded by taxpayers and corporate allies, the likes of which no leader has ever had in his corner?

More critically, why is the media still treating Bush and Cheney as if they are political figures of any significance, instead of two failures getting ready to skulk off the political stage? Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported recent polling that showed that Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson had higher favorable ratings with the public than Cheney.

But the Post folks apparently don't read their own columns, and still kowtow to our monarchs. Of course, they didn't report this poll, since they don't really do the I word. (A fascinating exception was Harold Meyerson's column of March 8, which said Bush was as bad as the worst presidents -- Buchanan and Nixon -- and that a lot of people are talking about impeachment, but somehow still ended up opposing impeachment as not technically the right thing to do, and also as "the angriest possible response." I personally don't base my politics on my short-term emotions, but I imagine there are people out there who can think of angrier responses than impeachment. Certainly the people sending death threats to our Supreme Court justices because they don't yet support full theocracy have found an angrier possible response than impeachment.)

Thursday's Post has a headline "Bush to Restate Terror Strategy." Until the fourth paragraph of the article, there is no hint that there has been diverse and massive opposition to Bush's 'strategy,' except a reference to "the troubled experience in Iraq." (A "troubled experience" sounds like eating one too many hot dogs, not three years of an incompetently run illegal invasion, colonial occupation and urban guerilla war.)

It would be perfectly legitimate journalism for the Post to say in the first paragraph of the article that Bush's "doctrine of preemptive war" was rejected at the time by the UN Secretary General, the Pope, most European allies, and the largest coordinated campaign of global protests ever held. Facts.

And to go on and say that the doctrine was used to justify the war in Iraq, using evidence that was based on a few sources of dubious reputation, that was completely false, and that was overstated or distorted to stimulate support for the war. More facts.

And to say that the war is now opposed by a majority of Americans, and has resulted in an occupation that has led to thousands of civilian deaths and to widespread disruption of Iraqi society.Still more facts.

Even by the most conventionally narrow journalistic standards, every one of these statements has a legitimate place in this news story.

But not one of these points, or anything of equal negative weight, is mentioned in the Post's article.

This is because the people who run the Washington Post (and similar media) play the same role in our society as the publishers of Pravda and Izvestia did in Brezhnev's Soviet Union. They love their freedom of the press, and, like a dog in a yard with an "invisible electronic fence," they know exactly where their "freedom" ends, and they go no further. Even as in their own pages we can learn that real and longlasting damage is being done to the planet they live in and the democracy that nurtured them, they still obediently stop at the "fenceline" in their brains. Loyally, they refuse to admit, or even to mention,all of the evidence that has convinced the vast majority of people on our planet, and to at least a plurality of people in the US that our rulers are not responsible, are not competent, are not exercising legal leadership and have no ideas or proposals worthy of our respect.

There has never in human history been a propaganda system as powerful, multi-faceted and sophisticated as the one we are dealing with. Nevertheless, it is failing. Let's keep the pressure on. What we have done as an opposition has not been perfect, but it is effective.

You can see a previous rant along these lines here.

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The New Pravda -- How the Washington Post Maintains the Status Quo

This occasional feature showcases articles in the Washington Post that spin the news to protect the US government as we know it.

My thesis is that the Post is neither liberal nor conservative, but is the house organ of those in power in the federal government, whoever they are. (Of course at the moment they are "conservative," i.e. they claim to support culturally conservative values and small government, and to identity with white workingclass people with fundamentalist faith. These claims are a bit shaky.)

While the articles critiqued here were written by specific reporters, this critique is of the wholeinternal process of the Post. We can assume that what is printed is not necessarily what the bylined reporter wrote or wanted to write. Post reporters are mid-level employees of a large corporation, which, like all corporations, has a "political line" that its employees must follow, and that line overrides its commitment to fact-based journalism. Just as at Pravda under the Soviet Union, some "stars" get a little more leeway, and occasionally stories seem to stretch the party line a bit.

But the overall party line at the Post is consistent from day to day --

• Federal power is exercised by responsible individuals who are motivated by sincere values and ideology to do the best thing for the nation and its people.
• Political differences in Washington are almost always matters of principled opinion and personality, of region and local interest and agency infighting. They do not reflect corrupt power blocs of people seeking personal profit. They also do not reflect grassroots movements for social change.
• Everyone worth taking seriously is a liberal or a conservative or a moderate, as defined by certain simple "hot button" issues. Radicals of all kinds are funny and silly.
• "National security" decisions in particular are not driven by corporate profit or by lust for power, but by genuine concern for our safety. These decisions are sometimes mistaken, but are never foolish, pathological, or criminal. Only those who have been employed in "national security" work have standing to say what "national security" means; if they say so, keeping a dictator in power in Central Asia is vital, while preventing nuclear reactors here in the US from being blown up is a minor concern. As for civil liberties, it's nice to protect them procedurally, but security (as defined by experts) always comes first.
• There may be a few "bad apples" in the high circles of federal power, but the independent mainstream media will seek them out and they will be punished. There never has been and never will be a corrupt conspiracy making our national decisions. There also never has been a grassroots movement based on popular outrage that has made a difference in people's lives.
• While there are always scandals in Washington, they just come and go, always unrelated to each other, with no need for organized action by citizens to fundamentally change the system. There are no patterns of power and privilege operating behind the scenes.

And if you buy all that, I have a nice monument I want to sell you, with a great view of the White House and the Capitol and the place where they keep that Constitution thing people used to care about so much.

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