Foam finger

I like slacktivist's post here, but let's be honest about this:

To McCain, apparently, talk of unity is wimpy weakness. To McCain, strength comes from division. To McCain, America can't be strong with people from other countries, we can only be strong against them. McCain's notion of America's strength and purpose seems to be a paraphrase of President Eisenhower's notion of civil religion: "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt opposition to an enemy -- and I don't care what it is."

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But John McCain thinks it's wrong to give them any credit for that. He thinks it's wrong -- un-American -- to give them any credit for their courage in coming together to claim their freedom. After all, McCain argues, America and the "great democracies" had stood for decades against the Soviet Union and that proud history mustn't be forced to share the stage with anyone else's proud history. America and its allies alone deserve credit and praise. To suggest that any of that credit or praise be shared with the people in the pictures above, McCain says, is to be "unclear" on an "important point."

I'm not aware if Obama has spoken on the exact subject but, frankly, I'd be surprised if his words would be dramatically different from McCain's. It's simply not allowed in Serious political discourse to suggest that the United States is not by default the Leader of the Free World and thus ultimately responsible for any great project of global cooperation. You won't, for example, hear Obama talk of the need to follow an international consensus on climate change. He has spent most of his time predictably raging against the demon of "foreign oil," mentioning green energy only insofar as it provides American jobs.

This is a corollary to what Andrew Bacevich talks about in this interview with Bill Moyers. The United States isn't going to fundamentally change until we leave behind our collective childlike need to have our politicans remind us that we are the smartest, cutest, and most wonderful child in the whole world even as we go around taking the other kids' lunch money and refusing to play unless we can be team captain. Unfortunately, this has been deeply embedded in the American cultural landscape for well over a century, perhaps from the beginning. Nothing short of an existential national crisis is likely to change it.

Palin!

Wait, it's not that one? Rats.

How you doin'?

Given that this is really the first YouTube presidential election, to use a gauche media frame, I've been a little surprised that there has of yet not been a major viral video that has grabbed the public attention. This is the best I've seen so far, and it deserves wider attention.



There's some inside baseball here--you have to know that McCain called the economy "fundamentally strong" to get the joke--so its potential for widespread appeal may be limited. But it's brief, witty, and squeezes a lot of damaging punches into its 52 seconds.

That's not a cookbook you're reading

The GOP's got a team on the ground in Denver.

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the team of nearly two dozen staffers at the opposition headquarters will be "fact-checking" statements made by the Obama campaign and by speakers during the convention.

"Just consider this the Ministry of Truth," quipped Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

We do, Dick, we do. (via)

Now your moment of daily depression

Haven't written much about the Democratic convention because I haven't seen very much of it. The Republicans should more fun to watch anyway, since it will be mighty entertaining watching a political party try to skirt the fact that every plank in its platform is now roundly unpopular across the country.

However, for sheer "dude, where's my democracy go?" madness, you can't top what happened to Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, and others at a wine-and-dine party in Denver thrown by AT&T to reward Blue Dog Democrats for backing telecom immunity in the FISA bill.

There was a wall of private security deployed around the building, and after asking where the press entrance was, we were told by the security officials, after they consulted with event organizers, that the press was barred from the event, and that only those with invitations could enter -- notwithstanding the fact that what was taking place in side was a meeting between one of the nation's largest corporations and the numerous members of the most influential elected faction in Congress. As a result, we stood in front of the entrance and began videotaping and trying to interview the parade of Blue Dog Representatives, AT&T executives, assorted lobbyists and delegates who pulled up in rented limousines, chauffeured cars, and SUVs in order to find out who was attending and why AT&T would be throwing such a lavish party for the Blue Dog members of Congress.

Amazingly, not a single one of the 25-30 people we tried to interview would speak to us about who they were, how they got invited, what the party's purpose was, why they were attending, etc. One attendee said he was with an "energy company," and the other confessed she was affiliated with a "trade association," but that was the full extent of their willingness to describe themselves or this event. It was as though they knew they're part of a filthy and deeply corrupt process and were ashamed of -- or at least eager to conceal -- their involvement in it. After just a few minutes, the private security teams demanded that we leave, and when we refused and continued to stand in front trying to interview the reticent attendees, the Denver Police forced us to move further and further away until finally we were unable to approach any more of the arriving guests.

You can see the Democracy Now segment here. I can't think of a way to look at this that isn't damn depressing, but if you've got one I'd love to hear it.

All the young girls

The Donkeyman takes issue with my note on the underage Chinese gymnast story. To clarify, I think he's right on the merits. The only point of my observation was to drearily point out the American tendency to pick out the speck in another's eye while ignoring their own head being encased in cement.* I've been particularly sensitive about this with all the ludicrous pip and vigor about Russia's supposedly outlandish actions in the Caucasus. Invading a sovereign nation to depose the ruling government! Imagine!

There can't be much doubt that the Chinese did illegally use girls younger than 16 for their gold-medal winning team, but good luck getting the IOC to give more than the half-hearted "investigation" that it put forward. Jacques Rogge would much rather spend his time bizarrely criticizing Usain Bolt. Even Yahoo! yahoo Dan Wetzel gets this one right; the IOC's corporate patrons who wanted the games in Beijing are demanding that everyone play nice.

This includes NBC, which started its China love-in at the opening ceremonies, and has continued unabated. Dismissing any chances to develop the natural rivalry between the world's two largest sports powers, NBC has treated China as a second home team, largely sparing Chinese athletes the cynicism and negativity given to most non-Americans.

All this must be very confusing to the average American. What was that Cold War thing about, again? I thought we were defending freedom from the clutches of Communist tyranny. Now we are nuzzling up to Chinese Communists--at least, that's what they call themselves--while shuffling missile-defense systems around Eastern Europe to stare down the evil Russians, who threw off their chains to embrace capitalism. Gosh, it's enough to make you think ruling-class propaganda is bullshit!

*I would be curious to know, however, how much the militaristic training and the like has contributed to the drive for younger and younger girls.

Bolt from the blue

It's official: Usain Bolt has upstaged the Michael Phelps Show.

Bolt completed an unprecedented double on Wednesday, winning the 200-meter race in world-record time. By duplicating his feat in the 100-meter dash, he becomes the first sprinter in history to set world records in both races in the same Olympics. And, unlike swimming, track and field records still mean something. Bolt had declared himself unconcerned with setting records after being criticized in some quarters for coasting home in the 100 m final, but in the 200 he seemed determined to answer the skeptics; running hard through the tape despite once again crushing the field.

There may be no holding back Bolt, who is just today turning 22 years old, from lowering his own records even more in the future. Some commentators, including Michael Johnson himself, believe Bolt could also win the 400 m if he were to enter. Could Bolt attempt an impossible treble in London? It's very unlikely, but that would be something to see.

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Bolt's run Wednesday proved once again--as if any more proof were required--the idiocy of NBC's time-warp philosophy of Olympics broadcasting. How could anyone be expected to avoid the lead story on every sports website and television show, and most news programs as well, for the twelve hours that passed between the event occurring and NBC's actual broadcast? The network successfully prodded organizers to have swimming and gymnastics finals in the morning Beijing time so they could be broadcast in the American evening, but the absence of a verifiable American track star perhaps left them lulled into thinking there would be no major stories from the track.

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I do have to give NBC some credit for its mostly appropriate coverage of Bolt, which has been forthright about his accomplishment without devolving into a 24-7 hype-fest. That's entirely coincidental with Bolt not being an American, of course, and you can certainly argue that he deserves Phelpsian-level accolades. But I'm not going to complain if NBC finally gets something right, however accidentally.

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Olympics week 1 review

I've not been invited, but I'm nonetheless going to play devil's advocate on the beatification of Michael Phelps. Specifically, the notion taken as gospel by the American media that Phelps is the Greatest Athlete Ever solely on the basis of medal count. Because of a number of circumstances, particularly the amount of redundant events, it's simply far easier for swimmers to rack up a larger medal haul than athletes in other sports. It's no coincidence that the record for gold medals in a single Olympics was also a swimmer, and would take another swimmer to approach Phelps' new mark in the future.

Phelps won five individual events, sweeping both individual medleys, both butterfly events, and the 200-meter freestyle. As it happens, sweeping both distances of a discipline is fairly common. Kosuke Kitajima swept the men's breaststroke, Stephanie Rice swept the women's IM, Rebecca Adlington swept the 400 and 800-meter freestyle, and Brita Steffen did the same with the 50 and 100-meter free. The disciplines which weren't swept often saw just minor re-arranging of the podium. Should I be so cynical to suggest that obviously extraneous distances are kept on for the sole purpose of giving someone a shot at a gaudy medal total and giving the sport more publicity?

Then there are Phelps' three medals as part of an American relay team, which further restricts the possibility of anyone challenging his record to another American or, on a good year, an Australian. Sorry, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe (four individual medals) and Laszlo Cseh of Hungary (three), but you can't piggyback on a world-class relay team, so you're out of luck.

Give credit where it's due; Phelps' record in the pool likely won't be challenged for some time, and that he needed two great strokes of luck along the way is a testament to how difficult it will be to match. But comparing it across the athletic spectrum is meaningless. Perhaps the only comparable redundancy is the 100-200 combination in track and field, where we might find an athlete even more jaw-dropping than Phelps. But we'll get to him in a moment...

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The swimming events are over, and the results are blessedly official. NBC's swimming commentators Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines have defended their title from Athens by winning the gold medal for Biggest Jingo Shills in the NBC family. Many people besides myself have complained about the singular focus on covering American athletes, but it's more than just face time that puts me on edge. American athletes, in their eyes, seem to have no character flaws whatsoever--only being too perfect!--while foreigners fall prey to all kinds of vices. One Australian swimmer, we were told by Hicks, was all over the tabloids back home, not-so-subtly suggesting she may be a woman of loose morals.

My favorite, though, is the managing of expectations, and the pretension that foreign media exalt their athletes to godlike status, while ignoring NBC's own role in doing the same. Time after time, we're told that So-and-So Athlete is a "huge star" and a "national hero" in their homeland, and the entire country will be let down if they don't win gold. Not that Americans would ever disown an athlete for not living up to expectations. Just ask Bode Miller.

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The American media is agog with outrage over the Chinese women's gymnastics team illegally using girls under the age of 16 on their gold-medal winning squad. They're likely right, but as Jennifer Sey and Dave Zirin explain, USA gymnastics can't claim much moral high ground since handing the whole enterprise over to the domineering Karolyis. Apparently ex-Communist torture techniques aren't just for the American secret prison complex.

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Memo to Switzerland: While we're sure the new, human model of Roger Federer, with emotion chip and everything, is more entertaining for the rest of the competition, we rather liked the old winning version better.

Also, congrats to Elena, who's always been one of my favorite players. Too bad I missed the match, but it's great to see her finally on top of a big tournament.
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Usain Bolt: Best sprinting name in history, maybe the best sprinter in history. Bolt broke the world record in the 100-meter final Saturday night, and may have wholly shattered it had he not slowed up in the final 20 meters. And he has yet to run the 200, which is--gulp--his better race.

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Like King, I'm also wondering what the hell is going on with the ceaseless beach volleyball coverage. Is it the toned, athletic women in bikinis? The near-certain American victory (though the men's team of Dalhauser and Rogers suffered a major upset in the preliminary round, and nearly another one in the first knockout stage)? Probably a little of both. Regardless, the sport is not at all compelling for all the reasons King cites, yet NBC insists on wasting a valuable hour of primetime every night for it.

Fakers!

The American media is beside itself with revelations that elements of Friday night's opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics were faked, including a lip-syncing little girl and a fireworks display clipped from an earlier rehearsal and placed into the main broadcast. Alas, if it only ended there. Turns out NBC's "China expert" Joshua Cooper Ramo is an employee of Henry Kissinger's Beijing office, China being one of the few places Kissinger can travel without being detained as a war criminal. Oh, the blinding transparency!

Dog days

It seems I start to lose my blogging focus around this time every year, so the posts may be a bit more sporadic for the next couple of weeks. Though you never know, things change quickly with me. I've been reading a fair amount trying to digest the conflict in Georgia, where the shooting part appears to be over for now, and I may do a post on that later to codify some of what's happened.

I'll probably be around to bellyache about NBC's Olympic broadcast, but they've placated me somewhat this year with the introduction of streaming video at their website, which is blissfully free of jingoistic commentary or, indeed, any commentary (it appears to be a generic English-language feed). I was watching today as Togo captured it's first ever medal; a bronze in whitewater kayak slalom.

Chaos in the Caucasus

The long-simmering conflict between Georgia and Russia over the semi-independent Georgian region of South Ossetia turned into a hot war this week as Russian forces responded to a Georgian attempt to seize the Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was elected in 2004 on a promise to re-institute South Ossetia into his country, and has been nuzzling up to the West, collecting military aid from the U.S. and Israel though his attempts to join NATO were rebuffed. NATO, apparently, wants to box Russia in but doesn't want to take on some ambitious head of state who might start shooting.

It's unclear quite what Saakashvili hopes to achieve with such a grossly lopsided conflict. Perhaps he was banking on more material support from his Western clients but, as much as the current brain trust in Washington is generally unpredictable and loves tweaking Russia, they aren't eager to get involved in a real shooting war. Moscow has been baiting Saakashvili to do what he just did and give them an excuse to forcibly annex South Ossetia and, more pertinently to their goals, perhaps install a pliable puppet government in Tbilisi.

Robert Farley has been covering this story extensively. The Newshoggers and Duck of Minerva each have several posts. Lenin's Tomb and American Leftist provide more background.

Go Team Coke!

King Kaufman nicely sums up the additional dilemmas facing those of us watching the Olympics this year, besides the usual crush of corporate advertising and mass displacement of the disadvantaged in favor of billion-dollar sports stadiums that will be glorified statues in three weeks. Of course, as commenters point out, it's a bit awkward for Americans to complain too bitterly about another nation's human rights abuses while we're still illegally occupying two countries.

That said, I'm still a sucker for the fundamental Olympic idea, or whatever remains that hasn't been commodified, so I'll undoubtedly brave the endless advertising and shameless jingoism on NBC to catch a fair bit of it.

Today King interviews David Maraniss, author of a book on the 1960 Olympics in Rome.

You had the Americans and the Soviets going for every little propaganda edge they could get. That kind of competition, it's weird to say, but that's kind of missing today. There's now a whole generation of grown-ups who never experienced that U.S. vs. Soviet Union thing.

It's like you have to have the Yankees to root against...

Ah, but you do have the Yankees to root against today. They're called, uh, the Yankees. Seriously, it's the only way I can watch any amount of Olympic coverage and survive. The joy of watching the jingoes stammer in disbelief as corn-fed 'Murican boys and girls sink in defeat makes the whole exercise worthwhile. Yes, I'm spiteful, and have a blackened chunk of coal where my heart should be, but these are the kinds of lengths I've been driven to.

Morning potpourri

Bil Browning puts the puzzle together and thinks it means Obama will announce Evan Bayh as his running mate on Wednesday. While it may or may not come this week--I'm not as convinced about the necessity of avoiding the Olympic news vacuum--I've begun steeling myself for the eventuality that Bayh will be the veep nominee. It's a strictly factional calculation; Obama has to throw a sop to the DLC/Clinton wing of the party, and must pick a right-wing Dem to satisfy the Broderist media because he is, of course, the Most Liberal Senator in their imaginations.

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After being static for the last two months, the polls are starting to show some bend in McCain's direction with Pollster.com's national trend map showing a toss-up for the first time (though the electoral map continues to favor Obama). No, I can't explain it either. The only positive sign here is that, should the public succeed in electing someone with whom it disagrees on virtually every policy matter, it would remove any remaining guilt I might feel about the inevitable collapse of our civilization.

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I am certainly not immune to the occasional siren song of lowbrow vices but, regardless of what it may or may not mean, this song just fails as a song. There are many pop songs you could be forgiven for singing; the only way this dog is getting into your head is with a blunt chisel. A major summer hit? Tsk, tsk, kids these days. (Bonus fun: Katy Perry, under the surname Hudson, once released a Christian album as a teenager.)

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If you can't run out and buy Thomas Frank's new book today, you can check out an excerpt at TomDispatch to hold you over. There's also an excerpt in the current Harper's.

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British artist SJ Esau. I admit, I don't like the tune that much (the last half is interesting) but the video is worth the effort.

He's the One!

Pastor Dan thinks McCain's new ad is a dog-whistle to right-wing Christians that Obama may be the Antichrist. If so, it's probably redundant. Since the magical invention of email forwards, every Democratic presidential candidate has probably been accused of being worse things. Thing just looks incoherent to me; Obama as Moses? Really?

McCain's bizarre turn to attacking Obama's enormous global popularity has many pundits flummoxed, but, while it is desperate, there is a shred of real strategy at work. Remember that conservative Christians, and right-wingers in general, have a well-nurtured persecution complex. They love to imagine themselves inside the walls of Constantinople, forever under siege by the "liberal elites" and the masses temporarily brainwashed by liberal dogma. McCain's recent ads are naturally inscrutable to the non-wingnut population; they are meant to rally the skeptical right-wing base--as well as the media--around the narrative of McCain as a set-upon underdog.

Of course, if Obama is the Antichrist it raises the interesting question of whether the Rapture believers ought to vote against him, since prophecy being foiled by human wiles would seem to be a difficult issue to resolve. Can the Will of God not win an election anymore? I suppose it worked for Bush, but I think the Almighty needed a little human intervention to pull those out.

The other inside job

The 9/11 Troofer folks get a hard time, and rightfully so, but it's worth remembering that much of the smug dismissals coming from Serious avenues are not an individual response but rather hand-waving at conspiracy theories in general, hoping that no one will look for the ones that might be true. This was made clear again last week when the case of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks--largely forgotten by the mainstream press--was thrown into more uncertainty by the apparent suicide of the FBI's latest suspect. Those attacks claimed to be the work of Islamic terrorists, and were suggested solemnly by the likes of Joe Lieberman and John McCain to perhaps originate from Saddam Hussein, but were instead traced to one of the U.S. Army's own research labs.

Was it an aborted early attempt by the government to manufacture a pretext for the Iraq invasion? Curiously, it was virtually ignored when the neo-cons were manufacturing their case the next year. Perhaps they decided simply making shit up was more effective.

Greenwald, as usual, has more.

Union day

David Sirota on the six little words that could change American labor.

Geoghegan reminded me that data show the more union members in an economy, the better workers' pay. The problem, he said, is that weakened labor laws are allowing companies to bully and fire union-sympathetic workers, thus driving down union membership and wages.

Enter Geoghegan's six words. If the Civil Rights Act was amended to prevent discrimination "on the basis of union membership," it would curtail corporations' anti-labor assault by making the right to join a union an official civil right.

That's Tom Geoghegan, who some are trying to draft as Obama's labor secretary. There's even a Facebook group dedicated to those ends, but there's a Facebook group declaring me the next Holy Roman Emperor. Good luck with that.

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According to this story in the Wall Street Journal Yesterday, Wal-Mart is apparently sweating out a Democratic victory in the fall because it might mean enabling Big Blue's least favorite "U" word.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

Tell me again, what does one of Obama's top economic advisers think of Wal-Mart?

...[Obama] has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." For Furman, however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the "efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony."

Somehow I don't think Mall Wart has anything to worry about. Nor will Geoghegan have to worry about having a new job in Washington next January. We're being Serious here.

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Real life Jokers. If you had any faith in humanity remaining, this story from the upcoming Sunday Times magazine should relieve you of it.

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A very addictive Friday night dance-floor tune from Ladytron.