WSJ's Stable Of Dissemblers and Disinformationists Keeps Churning Out BS

It appears I may have written too prematurely when I opined in my post about Kim Strassel's conspiracy flatulence, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/07/skewering-another-right-wing-conspiracy.html

that at least Holman Jenkins had pulled back from his own brand of garbage. As I had written:  "goofy as he was, Jenkins at least appears to have moved on to other subjects like trade, tariffs, and Elon Musk."   But alas, that didn't last too long.  By the time of the Weekend WSJ (Sept. 8-9, p. A13) little Holman was back at his personal propaganda mill once more - this time writing swill under the header 'We're Surviving Trump Just Fine'.    Seriously? Not from what Bob Woodward has presented in his recent interviews stemming from the upcoming publication of his latest book,   Fear: Trump in the White House ,

Indeed, in interviews over the weekend and yesterday (CBS, NBC) Bob Woodward warned that too many Americans aren't taking Trump's mental deficits and incompetence in office seriously enough, asserting we need to "wake up", e.g.

Bob Woodward: 'People better wake up' about Trump - CNBC.com

Which elicits the question why little Holman doesn't want his readers to be awake to what's going on, as when he pens such hog swill as "Mr. Trump is functionally, Mr. Obama, without the ambition".

Really, you terminal,  brainless maggot?  How about this:

 "Mr. Trump is functionally Mr. Obama - but minus Obama's brains."

Oh, another choice nugget from Holman: Quoting from Woodward's book, Trump saying "everyone's out to get me", and adding "So at least he is compos mentis about about some things."  Uh no, he is classically paranoid schizoid - when not being incompetent - but still needing to be confined to a rubber room, preferably in straight jacket.

But only at the end do we finally encounter the real reason that Jenkins is committed to spreading garbage like in his op-ed:

"I keep hearing from Trump voters who are satsfied they got the wrecking ball they voted for aimed at the Obama-Bush elite."

Thereby more than justifying Janice's malignant hatred of this human offal (her term is  "vermin")  - the "minority faction" - who tossed the whole country into a shitshow and national nightmare out of pique.   At least Jenkins is honest in his last sentence noting that "at least no president in my lifetime came wrapped in less false advertising".

Righto, which explains why Janice and millions of others are justified in hating the Trumpers even more - because they knew what they were doing - and said 'Bring it on!'

Another dissembling,  putz loser from the  WSJ stable of disinfo specialists is columnist Barton Swaim ('We Are All Aggrieved Minorities Now', p. C8, Sept. 8-9)

Swaim in his piece takes aim at Francis Fukuyama and his book, 'Identity'  while claiming "It's a tough sell on the topic of identity politics which is overwhelmingly a creation of the  left."  Seriously?    

Methinks Barton is either woefully ignorant or unable  to grasp or realize white identity has been around since before the Civil War slave era when slaves were expected to know their place and "Massah" was forever on slave patrol.  If Swaim did know that he'd have been aware white identity has actually metastasized since the Reconstruction era and fueled the excesses of Jim Crow. 

In Trump it reached its apotheosis, with the scumball  being the first ever "president" to appoint an outspoken white nationalist (Steve Bannon) to his national security council.   Hence, Swaim is either appallingly ignorant or stupid when after citing Fukuyama's claim "there are plenty of white nationalist voices that would like to drag the country backward on race," he proffers the rejoinder:

"Oh come on! White nationalism has no purchase whatsoever in American society."

No purchase whatsoever?  Then how did these vile memes spread during the Obama era? 

Again,  Swaim is unable to parse the blatant evidence for white identity and its presumed privilege,  not only in the media but in nearly every other Trump tweet. Oh, as well as filling the federal courts with reactionaries to defend his border policies and praising the Nazis and Johnny Rebs marching in Charlottesville last year as "some very fine people".  So one must conclude Swaim wouldn't be able to locate his ass from a hole in the ground, especially after the latest  White "massah" display in terrorizing Nike after it endorsed Colin Kaepernick's  kneel down NFL displays. See e.g.

The NFL's Ongoing Kaepernick Controversy Shows Much of White America Is Still in 'Slave Patrol' Mode

As Thomas Hartmann puts it: 

"The slave patrols live. 

Just ask any of the people at Nike who answer the phones and are dealing with an avalanche of angry white callers throwing the N-word around and complaining about Nike treating Kaepernick with respect. Trump, Pence, and billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News are ginning up even more racist hysteria on a near-daily basis.

But this doesn’t come out of thin air. There’s a long history of whites trashing blacks when they protest the systems whites have put in place to keep them down."

All of which is, of course, tied to white identity politics - whether Swam recognizes it or not. Swaim then goes on to bloviate, playing the false equivalence card:

"Whereas identity -obsessed progressives dominate America's universities, media and entertainment industry."

Which is a pile of rank codswallop.  Indeed, three political scientists: John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck, in their new book 'Identity Crisis', show that issues of white identity drove most white Trump voters. Tied to matters of economics, this identity stamp emerged as "racialized economics" in the parlance of the authors.

 Meanwhile, progressive identity has largely been energized in response to the reactionary identity politics and memes projected by the Right, e.g.


With such odious, infernal ,  white identity excesses the Left and its remaining bastions had no choice but to stand tall and explicate its own identity politics  - well, to protect besieged identities!  Naomi Klein in her recent book, 'NO Is Not Enough - Resisting Trump's Shock Politics'), argued that, pp. 90-91:

"It is short-sighted,  not to mention dangerous, for liberals  and progressives to abandon their own focus on identity politics",

Because:

"To a terrifying degree, skin color and gender conformity are determining who is physically safe in the hands of the state, who is at risk from vigilante violence, who can express themselves without constant harassment and who can cross a border without terror."

Bottom line? So long as the Right embraces identity politics and tribalism  - seeking to stoke their voters using hate and distrust,  we on the sane side  must adopt a counter identity politics - appealing to the angels of citizens' better nature - not their worst.  Those appeals to citizens' better natures then are all about protectively circling the  "wagons" - whether on behalf of the 800,000 DACAns Trump wants to ship out, or the decent Muslims he wants to block from coming in, or the Puerto Ricans he has abandoned as "too costly" for federal assistance after Hurricane Maria. In other words, our tribal identity must be to protect those minorities threatened by the howling banshees of the Right.

Then for the penultimate disinfo scribbler we have WSJ book reviewer Deirdre McCloskey (WSJ Review, p. C9) who knows about as much concerning Adam Smith and his conception of capitalism as the nearest rock.   She writes, for example:

"If you are a compassionate conservative... you will delight in 'Adam Smith: Father of Economics'. If you are what Americans call a 'liberal' you can get along with it, unless you go to full socialism."

Uh, you mean full democratic socialism?  Because if McCloskey had read Smith's  marvelous tome  'An Inquiry into the Wealth Of Nations'   she'd have seen he himself could be regarded as a democratic socialist, as when he wrote:

"there are needs in a civilized society that a barbaric one refuses to address."

Adding:

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole"

What improves the circumstances of the "greater part", like the 75 million currently on Meciaid and another 24-30 million on the ACA apart from Medicaid.  And hey, "can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole" - so not to be dinged down by benefit cuts to protect Tax cuts!  Maybe little Miss McCloskey ought to pick up Adam Smith's original work from the library and read it sometime!

But the top prize this week for major spin, bullshit and plain poppycock ought to go to William McGurn ('Playing the Civility Card',  yesterday, p. A13) when he actually summoned the chutzpah to first deliver an Oscar Wilde quote:

"A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feeling - unintentionally"

Then by an inversion of logic and exploiting the reverse Wilde notion that a gentleman is perfectly entitled to offend intentionally,  McGurn suggests Dotard J. Trump is really a "gentleman":

"Even the most ardent Never Trumper must concede that when this president offends, it's intentional."

But this is the sort of never ending bollocks we have to put up with from the Reich wing media machine, which incessantly churns to misalign the brains and thoughts of millions.   As for the WSJ op-ed pages and even Weekend Reviewe pages, they ought to include a warning label: "Perusing these pages could be detrimental to your mental health if you fail to exercise your critical thinking skills."

Let's Not Get Punked By The Neoliberals Again - With the "Trans-Pacific Partnership"

Someone asked maybe a month ago, in an unpublished comment, why I always depict the Neoliberals like a mutant bat-rat type creature with feral eyes, grasping a pile of money. Well, because that is how I image these types: money-grubbing, feral ratty bats that could give a damn about the rest of us, so long as they get the corner on their mythical "free market". (Which is in fact a coercive market for the 99%)

And, of course, one must always keep one eye open for these rats - say like the 'Fix the Debt' bunch, and any new initiative they try to slink by us. Since they're rats, they will try anything ....from bamboozling bollocks about "benefits" to over the top PR (such as applies to fracking). They never miss a beat.

Now, thanks to  Wikileaks (why not our precious mainstream media? ) we have learned about the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership, another way to screw with us like the earlier GATT and NAFTA.

According to the Guardian, WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations. The full agreement covers a number of areas, but the chapter published by WikiLeaks focuses on intellectual property rights, an area of law which has effects in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and civil liberties.

Negotiations for the TPP have included representatives from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei, but have been conducted behind closed doors. Even members of the US Congress were only allowed to view selected portions of the documents under supervision. Peter Bradwell, policy director of the London-based Open Rights Group says:

"We're really worried about a process which is so difficult for those who take an interest in these agreements to deal with. We rely on leaks like these to know what people are talking about,"

He adds:


"Lots of people in civil society have stressed that being more transparent, and talking about the text on the table, is crucial to give treaties like this any legitimacy. We shouldn't have to rely on leaks to start a debate about what's in then."

Indeed.

The 30,000 word intellectual property chapter contains proposals to increase the term of patents, including medical patents, beyond 20 years, and lower global standards for patentability. It also pushes for aggressive measures to prevent hackers breaking copyright protection, although that comes with some exceptions: protection can be broken in the course of "lawfully authorized activities carried out by government employees, agents, or contractors for the purpose of law enforcement, intelligence, essential security, or similar governmental purposes".


WikiLeaks claims that the text shows America attempting to enforce its highly restrictive vision of intellectual property on the world – and on itself. "The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through the US legislative process on the sly," says Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, who is living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London

Is this Assange torqued because he has to hole up in an embassy in London? Is he just venting because of the extent to which his operation has been downsized?  Not so fast.

Thomas Hartmann, writing on the smirkingchimp.com blog today observes:

" This week, Americans got a peek behind the curtain of the Trans Pacific Partnership, and what we found is frightening. On Thursday, Wikileaks published a complete draft of the “intellectual property rights” chapter of the TPP, and it poses a serious risk to free speech and information access. The document contains proposals that would change copyright and patent laws, so-called fair use practices, and the liabilities for alleged violations.

The provisions would stifle innovation, creativity, and information sharing, all under the guise of protecting intellectual property. And, many of the proposed changes are being suggested by US negotiators. Opposition to these restrictive policies is coming from other nations, like Canada, Chile, Malaysia, and New Zealand."

If an informed citizenry is the basis for democracy, why are we being kept in the dark? Perhaps because we no longer have a democracy  but a corporatocracy! If we really are a democracy then we need to heed Hartmann's words:

"Unions, civil rights advocates, environmental activists, and many other groups are demanding that the details of the TPP are made public. Before this massive trade deal is signed, Americans have the right to know what it contains, and the right to demand that our elected leaders say “No” to the TPP. -"

Walter White's Saga: Why Would a High School Chemistry Teacher Go Bad?

'Breaking Bad', the fantastic AMC series is now in the can as far as television history is concerned. On Sunday night, the finale grabbed no fewer than 10.3 million viewers, as former chemistry teacher Walter White went down in a blaze of glory. He also showed he knew plenty of physics, in devising an electronically-triggered,  high caliber, rotating machine gun in his car trunk,  to annihilate most of the Nazi meth makers.

But the question that really emerges is: How did this one time high school chemistry teacher mutate into the greatest meth maker the southwest had ever seen, and even to the level of taking out Mexican cartels?   As a former chemistry teacher myself (in the Peace Corps) I enjoyed it as much as teaching physics later.  Probably the titration of weak acids with a strong base were my favorite experiments, though the students were more enthralled by the ones that created small, vigorous 'eruptions' in their test tubes, like adding magnesium metal to dilute hydrochloric acid, see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeKsLi_6WkY.

Anyway, when I began watching 'Breaking Bad' five years ago, I was interested to see how it was that Walter White would want to go to the dark side. The answer arrived when he found out he had lung cancer, late stage lung cancer. Being in his late forties, this wasn't good news, because the health insurance he had provided a capped amount which would expire in no time with necessary chemotherapy treatments.

Walter probably knew even then that his treatments would ensure that his family would either go bankrupt or into massive debt. He'd also likely know that most bankruptcies in this country are medically -based. Either people lack any health insurance and they are afflicted with cancer or have a serious accident, or their insurance is inadequate to cover the costs over time, usually because most policies are capped at a maximum.

Faced with this stark choice, Walter - in cahoots with former student Jesse Pinkman- ends up making some of the purest meth ever seen. (Mainly because Walt is a chemistry task master, always imposing his high standards on his young apprentice who, if he had his way, would churn out any barely passable crap.)

Now, the rub arrives when he has "enough". Enough moola to cover his treatment costs with more than enough left over. But he - like many Americans, once they get the taste of newfound riches - doesn't want to stop at "enough". He wants more. At this stage, he transforms into the  quintessential American CEO, always spouting  figures and formulas to justify further expansion.  Alert viewers also would pick up on White's incessant citation of the 1 percent, and his insatiable drive to be part of it.


Well, from here it's all downhill, because to rise to the top Walt is forced to ruthlessly take out competitors, including the head of a Mexican cartel (Gus Fring) with one foot in the southwest U.S. By the end, in compiling his multi-millions, Walt has left a pile of bodies behind. As one blogger has put it aptly:

"It’s all there: the ego, the entitlement, the testosterone-fueled drive to come out on top, and the sense that money, not character or relationships, defines a person’s worth."

Walter White then has transmogrified into the epitome of the one percenter who scoffs at the little people and believes wealth defines worth. It is primarily this dynamic that fuels his unquenchable yen for ever more wealth, at great cost to his family and other relationships.  I would argue a similar dynamic is at work in wrecking the relationships of the wealthiest, as they grab for ever more - not to mention wrecking the country itself.

For make no mistake it is the wealthiest,  so many 'Walter White' clones - like the Koch brothers - who have brainwashed a third of the country into believing using a shutdown to get their way is the right thing to do.   As blogger Thomas Hartmann has put it:

"...despite the complete takeover of our political landscape by corporations and billionaires like the Koch brothers, the mainstream media has remained dead silent about the devastating effects of the disastrous Citizens United decision.

As a result, the majority of Americans have no clue what Citizens United is, let alone the damage it's done to our democracy and way of life."

At least, at the end, Walter White did the right thing and took out all the scum attempting to enslave Jesse Pinkman to make their meth. He also disposed of all his money, in his family's (son Flynn's) best interests.

Don't look for anything analogous (politically) to happen to the scum attempting to enslave Americans and hold them hostage to an Oligarchy wherein health care is denied and massive debt arising therefrom is the norm.