Notes on Seymour Hersh's book "Reporter"

An American soldier stoking a fire of burning houses during the My Lai massacre on March 16th, 1968 (Ronald S. Haeberle/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty)

by Gaius Publius

Seymour Hersh recently released a book on his life as a reporter, called appropriately, Reporter. It's gotten praise from many quarters, including from novelist and former intelligence officer John Le Carré: "This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over."

Journalist Matt Taibbi has apparently taken le Carré's words to heart, read it (no surprise) and written an interesting commentary on it for Rolling Stone. I'm drawing the observations below from Taibbi's observations.

On Intelligence Agencies "Going Rogue"

Taibbi recounts a story from Reporter about a time when Hersh, who makes his living discovering information that intelligence agencies don't want people to know, was handed a "treasure trove" of secret information the CIA did want him to know.

Taibbi writes:

Late in his new memoir, Reporter, muckraking legend Seymour Hersh recounts an episode from a story he wrote for the New Yorker in 1999, about the Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

Bill Clinton was believed to be preparing a pardon for Pollard. This infuriated the rank and file of the intelligence community, who now wanted the press to know just what Pollard had stolen and why letting him free would be, in their eyes, an outrage.

"Soon after I began asking questions," Hersh writes, "I was invited by a senior intelligence official to come have a chat at CIA headquarters. I had done interviews there before, but always at my insistence."

He went to the CIA meeting. There, officials dumped a treasure trove of intelligence on his desk and explained that this material – much of which had to do with how we collected information about the Soviets – had been sold by Pollard to Israel.

On its face, the story was sensational. But Hersh was uncomfortable. "I was very ambivalent about being in the unfamiliar position of carrying water for the American intelligence community," he wrote. "I, who had worked so hard in my career to learn the secrets, had been handed the secrets."

From this Taibbi takes this lesson: "This offhand line explains a lot about what has made Hersh completely embody what it means to be a reporter. The great test is being able to get information powerful people don't want you to have. A journalist who is handed something, even a very sensational something, should feel nervous, sick, ambivalent."

From the same story I take an additional lesson: The CIA, through an active, serving, "senior official," attempted to use an unauthorized intelligence leak of massive proportions to undermine and potentially sabotage the decision of an elected, sitting president, nominally the official's boss via the chain of command, all this in 1999, decades before Donald Trump.

Should Pollard have been pardoned by Clinton? Likely not. Pressure on Clinton from Israel and the Jewish-American community was intense, but he eventually decided against a pardon, and a look at the facts shows he made the right decision. Pollard had done quite a lot of damage, was unrepentant, and acted for gain as well as in the interests of Israel. So justice was done.

Yet the method attempted by the CIA to influence this decision included not just normal chain-of-command influence (going into the president's office and arguing the case), but backdoor leaks to the press (Hersh) calculated to make a pardon politically impossible. In other words, to box in a presidential decision, the agency decided to "go rogue" — use its access to classified intelligence material to force the president it serves to make a decision it preferred.

This is first cousin to blackmail by the keeper of the nation's secrets via a third party (Hersh), and it would actually have been blackmail had someone from the agency gone to Clinton ahead of time and told him of the plan. Which they may well have done.

Keep this intelligence community behavior in mind as you consider (a) how that community operates with respect to U.S. politics; and (b) how it may be helping to get rid of another elected, sitting president, one that few in the Beltway political establishment want to see continue in office.

To be clear: Should Trump be removed as president? I'm a strong yes on that, though you may disagree. How should he be removed? The answer to that sets precedent, doesn't it?

We've had presidents murdered out of office, most recently in 1963, in suspicious circumstances as a matter of fact. To my knowledge we haven't yet had one blackmailed out of office, though that clock has obviously not run out.

On CIA Assassination

Taibbi also brings up the history of political assassination carried out by the CIA: "Hersh was also among the first to describe a burgeoning American assassination program that to this day is poorly understood."

Within weeks of 9/11, for instance, Hersh quoted a "C.I.A. man" claiming the U.S. needed to "defy the American rule of law… We need to do this – knock them down one by one." He later reported on the existence of a "target list" and cited an order comparing the new tactics to El Salvadoran execution squads, reporting that much of this was going on without Congress being told.

That quote, about defying American rule of law, can be found in this New Yorker analysis of Hersh's writing about the executive assassination program in the post 9/11 years, "Close Read: What Did Seymour Hersh Say About Assassination?" published in 2009. It's quite revealing.

For even more about executive assassination, I strongly recommend reading this Hersh account of what really happened to Osama bin Laden — "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" — published in the London Review of Books.

A taste:

'They knew where the target was – third floor, second door on the right,' the retired official [one of Hersh's sources] said. Go straight there. Osama [by now an invalid] was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.' Some of the Seals were appalled later at the White House’s initial insistence that they had shot bin Laden in self-defence, the retired official said. 'Six of the Seals’ finest, most experienced NCOs, faced with an unarmed elderly civilian, had to kill him in self-defence?'

The whole thing, including Obama's shameful, self-serving sabotage of the agreed-upon plan, will fascinate you.

How to Be a Reporter

Taibbi ultimately reflects on the journalism business:

The job in many quarters has devolved into feeding captive audiences a steady stream of revelations framed to fit their preconceived ideas about the world, in order to keep them coming back. From Fox to MSNBC, the slant of programming has become more predictable, because audiences hate surprises and dislike being challenged. ...

Hersh's career is a tribute to the pursuit of the "unpredictable result." We used to value reporters who were willing to alienate editors and readers alike, if that's the way the truth cut. Now, as often as not, we just change the channel. This has been bad for both reporters and readers, who are losing the will to seek out and face the unpredictable truth.

I found myself speculating a little as I read those paragraphs. Matt Taibbi is already one of our most valuable journalists. Still, could this signal a change in his own career, or is this just an comment about someone else's career from his own desk at Rolling Stone? Taibbi's admiration is certainly obvious, as is his criticism of his peers.

Either way, Seymour Hersh has committed journalism of the most dangerous kind, putting him several steps ahead of what is now delivered to us as reporting. It would be nice to find a few more like him among the current crop.

GP
  

Does Marco Rubio Still Snort Coke?

I'm not wondering if Rubio is still a cocaine user because he supported Florida coke dealer, teabagger, hate talk radio sociopath and ex-congressman Trey Radel (not to be confused with another kind of GOP sociopath, Trey Gowdy; still in Congress). I'm asking because the Tallahassee party house he and another disgraced former Republican congressman (and his ex-best friend), David Rivera, own, was once a notorious for free-flowing drugs, women and dirty cash. But maybe Rubio cleaned up his act. Watch the Colbert video and judge for yourself.

And, as long as we're talking about videos and people weak-brained enough to accept Republican messaging, take a look at this video below. It really helps explain, at least to some extent, why severe Hate Talk Radio addicts are susceptible to the dysfunctional, crackpot, right-wing worldview-- and why they're a clear and present danger to society.

The JFK assassination a half-century later -- marginal notes on an event that really did change everything, or nearly

Bosom buddies -- um, not hardly

by Ken

I don't know about you, but I'm mostly numbed by the prospect of enduring yet another JFK assassination anniversary. It's like we've been through this 50 times already.

Don't you hate it when a bunch of clichés and bromides turn out to be true? An event that changed everything. The day America lost its innocence. And so on and on. You can pick at them all. It didn't change quite everything, and the innocence of America probably wasn't more than a centimeter or two deep. Still . . . .

It is possible to find new takes on the event. The other day George F. Will immersed himself in his miasma of right-wing creepery and found a true buttwipe's way to celebrate the event, with a WaPo column that was blurbed: "For liberals, his fiscally conservative nature is an inconvenient truth." (No, I'm not offering a link. The other day I offered a link to an Alessandra Staley review, but I do have limits. If you want to read this piece of willhooey, you can find it yourself.)

A few weeks ago I was thinking I might mark the occasion by passing on the story CBS News's Bob Schieffer had shared in AARP The Magazine about his status as "a footnote of sorts to the awful events of that weekend in 1963" -- how as a young reporter on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram he gravitated automatically to the newspaper office after hearing news of the president's shooting and wound up answering a phone call that turned out to be from Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, wanting to know when someone was going to pick her up to take her to the Dallas police HQ to see her son, and Bob jumped into the breach, and when he arrived with Mrs. Oswald, because it was his habit to dress for work in a suit, he was presumed to be a law-enforcement person, and very nearly got into an interview room with the Oswalds, mother and son, before finally somebody asked the question he points out he should have been asked from the start, namely who he was. In that particular time and place, "a reporter" was definitely not a good answer.

I expect Bob has told this story upwards of 6 million times over these 50 years, but I don't remember ever hearing it before, and I think it's a heckuva story. Of course everyone is presumed to have a story about where they were when they heard the news, and everyone seems to be sharing those stories in the media. The best I've heard is now-retired 35-year Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, now 94, recalling that at the time he was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (that's the big NY USA job), and he was visiting Bobby and Ethel Kennedy at their home in Virginia when the attorney general, his boss, got word about the events in Dallas.

But my favorite story for this anniversary year comes from the Washington Post's Loop-master, Al Kamen, under the heading "Echoes Not So Distant (links onsite):

President Richard Nixon apparently thought the JFK assassination might quickly fade from the country's collective memory, newly transcribed audiotapes show.

Not exactly. All the events and reminiscence leading up to the 50th anniversary on Friday of the tragic event say otherwise. And though Nixon assumed that recollections had faded less than a decade after Kennedy's death, it still cast a shadow on the 37th president and his aides, according to our friends at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, who are transcribing the tapes of Nixon's White House years.

The subject came up in August 1971 when Nixon was discussing travel plans to Dallas and New York with his top aide, H.R. Haldeman, the tapes show. Kennedy had been gunned down in a motorcade in Dallas less than eight years earlier, but Nixon seemed to think a parade of his own wouldn't be a problem.

The assassination, Nixon told Haldeman, "was so far back in the public consciousness."

Though the conversation ended with Nixon assuming he would do a motorcade of only "three or four blocks," the president ultimately traveled across the city via helicopter.

In another transcribed conversation from just a few months later, Nixon and his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, realize that it is the anniversary of JFK's death. "You know, listen, I had not thought of it, but -- " Nixon says as Woods calls to the president's dog. "This is the day the -- "

"That Kennedy was -- " Woods says.

"Right," Nixon replies.

It's just another example of why Tricky Dick was always famous for his keen sense of history.

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

Are You One Of The Tiny Minority Of Americans Still Taken In By The JFK Assassination Lies?

On November 22, 1963 I was just a kid but I remember thinking, when I was walking down the staircase of my school and heard that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, that the right-wing hate-mongers and racists had killed the president. In 5 days it will be 50 days since that first impression popped into my brain. It's never going away, no matter how many and how elaborate and how determined the lies the ruling elites put out about how he was assassinated. Recently Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC that "To this day, I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone." According to recent polling only 24% of Americans accept the "official" version that Oswald was acting alone.

Wednesday Bill and Hillary Clinton will accompany President and Michelle Obama at a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Living on twitter and following right-wing Republicans like Bryan Fischer and Texas congressman and Oklahoma bombing conspirator Steve Stockman, it's amazing to me that neither Clinton nor Obama was been murdered.

Friday, The Guardian, remarking on John Kerry's suspicions about who was behind the murder, speculated that the list includes the CIA and the Mafia, always the most logical suspects. And there are more and more books being published on the topic, over a thousand since the assassination. Here are 3 books The Guardian synopsied with very different conclusions:

1. The Mob did it

• The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination, by Lamar Waldron (Counterpoint)

Thesis: Godfathers Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante took out the president to neutralise his anti-mafia crusade. They framed Oswald and his supposed Cuban puppet-masters, a ruse which deceived LBJ and, to this day, Kerry.

"They got away with it because they planted the evidence against Castro," said Waldron. A cover-up endures. "We know the FBI had Marcello's confession in 1985 and basically suppressed it." A Warner Brothers film due out next year, based on this and a previous book co-authored by Waldron, will star Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. "We hope the movie will bring attention to the fact hundreds of (government) files haven't been released."

2. The CIA did it

• CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys: How and Why US Agents Conspired to Assassinate JFK and RFK, by Patrick Nolan (Skyhorse)

Thesis: Top spooks Richard Helms and James Jesus Angleto hired mafia hitmen to murder Kennedy to derail his planned disengagement from Vietnam and rapprochement with Cuba and the Soviet Union. "Their motive was power, self-preservation."

Nolan cites research by "world-famous forensic scientist Dr Henry Lee," who writes the book's foreword, to argue there was more than one gunman. Nolan's website says he "utilizes the mosaic method of intelligence, analyzing each piece that is obtained and determining its relationship to other pieces to arrive at the solution."

3. Lyndon Johnson did it

• The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The case against LBJ, by Roger Stone (Skyhorse)

Thesis: The vice-president orchestrated an elaborate plot involving elements in the mob, CIA, White House and Cuban exile community to eliminate his boss. The motive: JFK planned to dump LBJ from the ticket in 1964, leaving him exposed to corruption probes.

The Texan Johnson's control over Dallas police facilitated the cover-up of evidence such as a fingerprint in the book depository's sniper's nest which matched his personal hitman, Mac Wallace. The truth, says Stone's Amazon entry, was hiding in plain sight all this time. "LBJ was not just shooting his way into the White House, he was avoiding political ruin and prosecution and jail for corruption at the hands of the Kennedy's (sic)."

I'm not reading any of these books. I am reading Dallas 1963 by Bill Minutaglio and Steven Davis-- which we first discussed in October in terms of unhinged Dallas area radical Pete Sessions (R-TX). Yesterday, the Seattle Times reprised a review of the book by Steve Weinberg that first ran November 16. Weinberg suspects that none of the slew of new books related to the assassination will achieve a fresher approach, or be presented as skillfully, as Dallas 1963.

The four-year narrative does not attempt to answer definitively whether Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president without assistance. (Oswald does not make his first appearance in the narrative until page 178. The focus is not on him until the book reaches the year 1963.)

Instead, longtime Texas scholar/journalists Minutaglio and Davis set out to explain why the city of Dallas in 1963 was the mostly likely place in the world for a fatal shot to be aimed at Kennedy, and why in the aftermath it was the most likely place in the world for the suspected assassin to be murdered by unhinged nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

Avid followers of previous Kennedy assassination books will probably recall that multiple presidential advisers and Dallas civic leaders begged the president to stay away from the city during November 1963. Those prescient individuals understood how Kennedy haters from various political groupings had coalesced. The lineup of Kennedy haters as assembled by the authors is impressive and fascinating. The first among equals is Gen. Edwin A. Walker, a high-ranking U.S. military officer who died in 1993. His military bearing, his penchant for violence and his widely disseminated hateful political views in combination managed to exude an undeniable charisma.

Additional Kennedy haters with power among the Dallas elite include U.S. congressman Bruce Alger, Dallas mayor Earl Cabell, Baptist minister W.A. Criswell, newspaper publisher Ted Dealey and billionaire oil tycoon H.L. Hunt. Minutaglio and Davis draw masterful word portraits of each man, as the characters show up for a few pages, disappear and then reappear.

Occasionally, Dallas leaders emerge who might be called heroic, as they labored to diminish the hatred of the powerful elite against not only the president, but also against minorities and low-income residents. The most unlikely semi-hero is Stanley Marcus, the wealthy owner of the Neiman Marcus department store. Because of his wealth and high-end clientele, Marcus had a voice among the Dallas elite. On the other hand, because of his Jewish heritage, Marcus was considered a fringe member of the power structure. He understood that defending Kennedy and promoting civil rights in general would cause many of the department store’s wealthiest customers to take their business elsewhere. So, naturally, Marcus felt conflicted. His portrayal by the authors is memorable and might lead readers (including me) to learn more about Marcus. He died in 2002.

Near the book’s opening, the authors state what came together in Dallas during the early 1960s was “unlike anything in the history of the country-- a handful of people in a seemingly staid city begin to set the stage for one of the greatest tragedies” the United States has experienced. “Marooned in an outpost of super-patriotism, their first, cautionary discussions begin to morph into a cacophony of anger.” The zenith of the cacophony turned out to be a rifle shot aimed at the Kennedy motorcade.

Let's hope a similar introduction referencing Bryan Fischer and Rep. Steve Stockman in a similar context. But I wouldn't discount the possibility.

Saturday Night Conspiracy Theory: Assassination

Potential hit man?

The Republican Party sure has changed. The GOP was once as anti-Semitic as it's now anti-Hispanic and anti-African American. And it was certainly the anti-Zionist party. Now, of course, fealty to Israel means more in GOP politics than fealty to America. When Dick Durbin (D-IL), today one of Israel's staunchest friends in the U.S. Senate, ran for Congress in southern Illinois in 1982 and beat longtime Republican incumbent Paul Findley, there was an awful lot of Israel-friendly money sloshing around in the campaign, all of it going towards defeating the virulently anti-Israeli Republican, Findley.

Today Findlay is 91, living quietly-- and sometimes not so quietly-- in Jacksonville, Illinois. I'm guessing he's rooting for Ron Paul and is horrified at the prospect of a Sheldon Adelson-Gingrich presidency. Last night when I was driving home, I heard Mike Malloy reading a blogpost by Alison Weir from Rock The Truth about an alleged Mossad assassination plot against George H.W. Bush. There was a dual goal: getting rid of the hated Bush, who was pressuring Israel to make peace with the Palestinians, and the installation of a new-breed Republican-- a nitwit apocalyptic Likud shill-- as president of the United States, namely Dan Quayle. That website is, to put it mildly, consumed with conspiracy theories, so I got home and looked around to see if I could find any legitimate confirmation of the plot.

"Legitimate" comes down to the degree of legitimacy you would confer on former Republican congressmen Findley and Pete McCloskey. Here's a report Findley wrote in 1992 about the plot, which appears to be the basis of the Weir claims that so animated Mike Malloy.

In Washington, [Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir] fumed against Bush's selection of the time and place for the next round of Arab-Israeli meetings and tried to reschedule them to his own convenience. He declared that his government will not be pushed around by any other nation, even its chief benefactor, the United States.

These aggravations to a president's good nature, serious as they are, cannot be the only problems weighing heavily on Bush's mind. No American president, and especially George Bush, can wisely put out of mind a far more serious threat to his presidency, the question of personal survival.

As long as he remains president, George Bush will be the center of controversy and, therefore, personally at risk. Despite the endeavors of the Secret Service, the agency whose primary purpose is to protect the president of the United States from harm, no occupant of the office can be effectively shielded from danger.

The Secret Service has special reason for concern at this point in George Bush's career. Before Bush headed for the opening day of the peace conference in Madrid, the Secret Service received a warning that elements of Israel's spy operation-- the Mossad-- might put Bush's life in danger.

The danger was first expressed by Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent, to a group of Canadian parliamentarians. After four years' service, Ostrovsky had left the Mossad in protest against its methods and had written the book By Way of Deception, exposing Israel's spy operations in intimate detail.

Ostrovsky told the Canadians that the Mossad, not the elected political establishment, is the real engine of policy in Israel. He added ominously that secret intelligence he had been receiving suggested strongly that Mossad's hatred of Bush-- and support for Vice President Dan Quayle-- may lead to an attempt on the president's life. Quayle, always popular with Jewish groups, is regarded by Israel as much more sympathetic to its problems than Bush.

Ostrovsky told the group that he feared for his own safety and was under Mossad surveillance.

This astounding information was relayed by one of those attending the Canadian meeting to Paul N. "Pete" McCloskey, my former colleague in Congress. McCloskey, an attorney, is my associate on the board of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based organization that focuses on Middle East policy. He was recently named by Bush to the National and Community Service Commission.

Alarmed for the safety of his longtime friend, George Bush, McCloskey flew to Ottawa for a face-to-face interview with the former Mossad agent.

Ostrovsky impressed McCloskey as a patriotic Zionist who believes the Mossad is out of control. Ostrovsky told him the present leadership of the Mossad wants "to do everything possible to preserve a state of war between Israel and its neighbors, assassinating President Bush, if necessary." He said a public relations campaign is already underway in both Israel and the United States to "prepare public acceptance of Dan Quayle as president."

After lengthy discussion during which he became convinced that Ostrovsky was "real" and telling the truth, McCloskey took the next flight to Washington. There he relayed the information to the Secret Service and State Department, receiving mixed reactions to Ostrovsky's reliability. An officer of the Navy Department dismissed him simply as a "traitor to Israel."

Presumably, Malloy (and Weir) decided to bring this up because of the recent column by Andrew Adler, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, suggesting that Israel might "have to" assassinate President Obama. Apparently extreme right-wing forces in Israel like Biden almost as much as they once liked Quayle. I'd keep deranged (and violent) Florida Representative Allen West away from the President... just in case.

Firing People (Not The Corporate Kind) Is What Gladdens Willard's Heart. Santorum Gets A Woody From Assassinations

I suspect it won't be easy to find many people-- Glenn Greenwald and Ron Paul, perhaps more quietly, excepted-- who will care too much that another Iranian scientist was assassinated this week. In fact, I suspect most Americans who hear about it will feel more celebratory than remorseful.

Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an academic who also worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, and another unidentified person were killed in the attack.

The blast happened after a motorcyclist stuck an apparent bomb to the car.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US.

Both countries deny the accusations.

Iran's Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told state television that the attack against Mr Ahmadi-Roshan would not stop "progress" in the country's nuclear programme.

He called the killing "evidence of [foreign] government-sponsored terrorism."

Local sources said Wednesday's blast took place at a faculty of Iran's Allameh Tabatai university.

Two others were reportedly also injured in the blast, which took place near Gol Nabi Street, in the north of the capital.

Ron Paul and, to a lesser extent, Jon Huntsman, have been making the only significant contributions to a rational foreign policy debate of any of the misanthropes running for the GOP nomination. This week, Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates explained how.

It doesn't lie in the substance of his foreign policy views (which I'm largely but not wholly in sympathy with) but in the way he explains them. Paul routinely performs a simple thought experiment: He tries to imagine how the world looks to people other than Americans.

This is such a radical departure from the prevailing American mindset that some of Paul's critics see it as more evidence of his weirdness. A video montage meant to discredit him shows him taking the perspective of Iran. After observing that Israel and America and China have nukes, he asks about Iranians, "Why wouldn't it be natural that they'd want a weapon? Internationally they'd be given more respect."

Can somebody explain to me why this is such a crazy conjecture about Iranian motivation? Wouldn't it be reasonable for Iranian leaders, having seen what happened to nukeless Saddam Hussein and nukeless Muammar Qaddafi, to conclude that maybe having a nuclear weapon would get them more respectful treatment?

Tuesday 40% of Republican primary voters in New Hampshire voted for the two candidates who have been campaigning against the war, Paul and Hunstman. And 9% voted for raving lunatic Rick Santorum. In a more thoughtful society Santorum would be undergoing mental health therapy instead of pretending to be running for president.

"On occasion scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly," said Rick Santorum at a recent campaign stop in Greenville, South Carolina.

But it isn't just dead Iranian scientists that gladden Santorum's heart.

He continued: "I think we should send a very clear message that if you are a scientist from Russia, North Korea, or from Iran and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a bomb for Iran, you are not safe."

Santorum offers these comments while Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is in Pyongyang conducting diplomatic talks with North Korea. Panetta is trying to bring North Korea back to its former commitment to disarmament in exchange for foreign aid and the negotiation has been difficult.

Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords Executed In The Fascist State Of Arizona

UPDATE: Earlier reports that Congresswoman Giffords had died was premature and there are reports now that she is in critical condition and may survive. That would make it an attempted execution or attempted assassination. 6 other people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl were killed and a 12 others were seriously wounded.

Last fall I remember reading some right-wing bloggers and hack propagandists claiming that when Rep. Raúl Grijalva shut down his local offices after death threats and several shots fired into his office, it was all "a publicity stunt." A few hours ago I think I offended a young woman who follows me on twitter by referring to Arizona, where the real right-wing death panels are at work killing poor people on a regular basis, as a fascist state. This morning, at around 10AM Rep. Giffords was at a Congress-on-Your-Corner event at a Tucson grocery store. She was shot point blank in the head by a young, deranged fascist gunman, Tea Party terrorist Jared Loughner, 22 (on the right), who then started shooting indiscriminately into the crowd, killing several people and wounding over a dozen others, including at least two of Gifford's congressional staffers. Reports are coming out that there were two others involved, one who, like Loughner, is now in custody and one who is being looked for by police.


Giffords, 40, is a mainstream conservative, a Member of the Blue Dog caucus who, most recently, was one of the few Democrats refusing to vote in favor of Nancy Pelosi to lead the Democratic minority. She voted as frequently with the Republicans as with the Democrats on hotly disputed substantive issues. To fascists she's a flaming liberal or a communist and Sarah Palin described her as "a target." She was first elected in 2006 when she won an open Republican seat 54-42% (114,263- 89,104). She was reelected in 2008-- despite favorite son John McCain's 52% victory in the district-- by an increased margin 55-43% (179,629- 140,553).

In November she nearly lost her seat in the midst of two factors-- Democratic disappointment with legislators like Giffords supporting GOP policies and a veritable jihad against the mainstream by a very well-financed far right. Giffords was the victim of millions of dollars of lies and calumny, questioning even her patriotism. She managed to scrape by with a 49-47% win against a weak Republican opponent (133,046-129,405). Notice that about 45,000 of her 2008 voters abandoned her while the Republican falloff from 2008 was only half that. Republican hate groups like the China-financed U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($161,907.00) and the shady Big-Pharma-financed 60-Plus Association ($284,174.19) were able to buy an awful lot of hate. Mission accomplished? Federal Judge John Roll, who has received death threats from right-wing domestic terrorist groups because of a pro-immigrants ruling, was also murdered. Krugman's got a reasonable reaction up at his Times blog.

We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.

Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing.

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

Update: I see that Sarah Palin has called the shooting “tragic”. OK, a bit of history: right-wingers went wild over anyone who called 9/11 a tragedy, insisting that it wasn’t a tragedy, it was an atrocity.

The assassin made a video:



And Palin tried to change history, 1984-style, by deleting one of her violent posts:



And Loughner's MySpace page has been deleted-- although here's a screen shot. Is that glock the murder weapon?



Inappropriately, CNN announces "There's nothing to indicate this is terrorism." That would be true in a world where the right-wing bomber who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building was also not a terrorist. Or does "terrorism" on mean Muslim violence to CNN now, like Fox? As Jared Mull tweeted earlier, if Loughner were Muslim, "we'd be torturing him and invading Yemen. But he's a crazy white dude, so be nice guys; don't politicize." Isn't anyone who shoots up a crowd in an assassination attempt "crazy" by definition? Anyway, it's important for Arizona to get back to listening to as many hours of Glenn Beck as possible asap. Dave Neiwert, author of The Eliminationists, knows what a danger Beck and Palin and their violent hate talk is. His post at Crooks and Liars is worth reading. And I'm guessing that NJ Senator Frank Lautenberg had Beck in mind when he issued this statement a few moments ago:

“We are all shocked and saddened by the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and other innocent people today. Rep. Giffords was innocently pursuing her interest in serving the public when she was shot in this maniacal act. America must not tolerate violence or inflammatory rhetoric that incites political violence.”

UPDATE: Today Might Be A Good Day For Boehner To Come Out In Public And Cry

But for some Republicans, the attempted assassination of a Democratic Congresswoman, the murder of a federal judge and 5 other people and lots of wounded people is a reason to celebrate. I expect these fools will follow Palin and start deleting their website, so here's a screen chat of the chatter on the right today. Proud to be a Republican today (and everyday)? No? Watch more Fox News.



Alan Grayson served on Gabby Gifford's Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee and was a huge fan of hers. He wrote about his feelings at HuffPo today but I've extracted some of the less personal lines:

I know nothing about the man who shot Gabby, and what was going through his mind when he did this. But I will tell you this-- if he shot Gabby out of hatred, then it wasn't Gabby he was shooting, but rather some cartoon version of her, drawn by her political opposition. Because there is no way-- NO WAY-- that anyone who really knows Gabby could hate her or hurt her. She is a kind, gentle soul.

Grayson doesn't mention who created that twisted and distorted cartoon version but we all know that creating those caricatures has made millionaires out of social misfits like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and other right-wing celebrities who thrive on pumping hate into the culture, hate that sad, deranged cretins like Jared Loughner don't have the ability to resist. So who's to blame? Rupert Murdoch? Roger Ailes? Or all of us who tolerate and reward this kind of anti-social behavior?

November 22, 1963

-by Doug Kahn

I was in the sixth grade in Washington, D.C. We were on an outdoor basketball court, after Ben W. Murch Elementary let out for the day, and someone said 'Kennedy got shot.' We didn't believe it, but also we really did. No one would say that if it weren't true. One of the kids said 'good riddance' (we figured it must have come from his dad), but I don't remember it having any emotional impact, the blood pounding in my head was so loud.

I went over to my friend's house and we watched tv. I remember the reports from Parkland Memorial Hospital, and the image of the hospital from the road leading in. I'm sure I'll never forget that image.

On Monday I looked down at the funeral procession from an office building along the route of the funeral, in the office of a family friend.

I had been the Junior Red Cross representative from my school, and I remember having given a short speech (from 3x5 index cards, I can see the index cards) at a school assembly that fall. All the representatives from D.C. schools were going to go to an event at the White House, and I remember wondering how cold it would feel sitting in temporary bleachers outside. That never happened.

I'm very sure of the memories up until the moment the tv news reporter said "President Kennedy has been declared dead." He could have used different words; I'm not sure. The memories after that happened to some other person.

Obama's Political Opponents Are Calling For Coups And Encouraging Assassination

Over the weekend a friend sent me a link for a Facebook polling asking whether President Obama should be killed. I called a friend of mine who works at the Secret Service. They were already on the case. Yesterday People For the American Way broke a story that I found considerably more disturbing than Joe Wilson's "You lie" screech at the Joint Session of Congress. This outbreak was from another extreme right wing Republican congressional backbencher looking for some attention, Trent Franks, whose Arizona district stretches from the suburbs west of Phoenix through Glendale and Sun City and up to the northwest corner of the state. It includes the bandit polygamist communities around Colorado City, the Hopi Indian Reservation, Lake Havasu City (home of London Bridge). McCain ran up a hefty piece of his margin of victory last year in Franks' district which has a PVI of R +12.9. Franks was re-elected with 60% of the vote.

Arizona Republicans tend to be very conservative. And Franks is the worst of a bad batch, easily the most reactionary member of the state's congressional delegation. His overall, career-long ProgressivePunch score is 2.15 (out of 100) and since Obama was elected president his score sank down to a big fat zero. Franks is an angry and driven man who feels he was dealt a bad hand in life. He's filled with irrational paranoia, bigotry and hatred. And, of course, he's a birther. Normally the Republican leadership keeps him away from the cameras and microphones but this week he escaped from the reservation and found an opportunity to declare President Obama "an enemy of humanity." Watch:



"Obama's first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers' money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries...there's almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. We shouldn't be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can't do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity."

-Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ)

Congressmen like Franks and Wilson enable the violent nuts the same way Republican hate-talkers Savage, Limbaugh, Hannity, Couler and Beck do. And sure, enough, yesterday evening John Perry from extreme rightist website Newsmax upped the ante:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic... Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”

In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.

The people behind this revving up of violence and social unrest are the losers from last year's election-- the disgruntled, angry right-wing of the Republican Party.

UPDATE: Franks Is A Closet Case!

Franks is part of a circle of gay evangelical preachers and their pals. Sometimes you put up a post and you get the most interesting phone calls! It's funny-- it's so predictable that the most hysterical anti-gay maniacs are always the big closet queens.

Ever Hear About Religionists Who Get Confused And Wind Up Workin' For Satan Instead Of Jesus?

It happens all the time-- and I mean all the time. But rarely is it as blatant as it's been in Arizona lately. If you read my travel blog you may have noticed that Arthur Frommer is warning tourists away from the beautiful and touristic state because of all the gun-nuts run amuck. At the time we also mentioned that a fake preacher, Steven Anderson, has been leading his very Republican congregation in prayer for President Obama's death.

The national media has mostly stayed away from the story but yesterday, FoxNews.com/, of all places, blew the whistle on the crazed right wing fanatic. Maybe they were afraid of being charged as an accessory if one of the loons pulls something. Did Glenn Beck mention Anderson's sermon, "Why I Hate Barack Obama," it on his show?

"I hope that God strikes Barack Obama with brain cancer so he can die like Ted Kennedy and I hope it happens today," he told MyFOXPhoenix on Sunday. He called his message "spiritual warfare" and said he does not condone killing. 

...In Anderson's controversial sermon, delivered at his Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe before Obama arrived for a speech in Phoenix earlier in the month, the pastor said he wants the president to "melt like a snail" with salt on it. 

"I'm gonna pray that he dies and goes to hell when I go to bed tonight. That's what I'm gonna pray," he told his congregation.

Anderson, who's an anti-Semitic fanatic, has made a spectacle of himself in the past (video from April of this year). Looks like this right-wing hate-monger and loon doesn't like what he calls "torture" or being "reviled," at least not when he's the onject. Rick Sanchez had the story of Anderson's Obama threats on CNN a couple days ago-- and put it all together in the good old CNN way before they became the Lou Dobbs Network:




Michelangelo Signorile interviewed Anderson about his calls for gays to be executed and his praying that Obama die.

MS: You want all gay people to be executed, correct?

SA: That is correct. It is what the Bible teaches.

MS: If somebody were to go out with a machine gun and spray down a crowd of gay and lesbian people, would you think that was okay?

SA: , I would not think it's okay because I believe in due process.

MS: Would that person be a murderer?

SA: No, I would not judge them as a murderer, no.

Toward the end of the interview, as he went on a rant calling all gays child molesters, I let him know I was gay, something I can't believe he didn't already know:


MS: You know, I'm gay..I'm gay, and I don't molest any children. What do you think of that?

SA: Well, I'd say you're lying.

MS: You think i must be molesting children, right?

SA: Exactly, right.

MS: Do you pray that I'll die tonight?

SA: If you're a homosexual, I hope you get brain cancer like Ted Kennedy.

Click. He hung up

He's got the audio interview up on his site.

WHO MURDERED THE DC MADAM? WE CAN BE SURE IT WASN'T LARRY CRAIG, MARK FOLEY, MITCH McCONNELL OR LINDSEY GRAHAM

The Tarpon Springs, Florida police and the corporate media have immediately declared the death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey (aka- "the DC Madam") a suicide-- even before the police were willing to confirm the body was hers! They claim there is a suicide note but won't disclose the contents. You'll recall she was convicted of running a prostitution service catering to members of the Inside the Beltway elite. Her client list yielded up a number of Bush Regime bigwigs and the hapless wingnut from Louisiana, David Diapers Vitter, who has a long history of chasing prostitutes in his own state and elsewhere. Of course, it is likely that whomever else was on that client list-- the undisclosed politicians, for example-- would have quite the motive for murder.

One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial.

Last year, Palfrey said she, too, was humiliated by her prostitution charges, but said: "I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton wasn't made of."

It could have been a suicide... but I wouldn't jump to conclusions until after a thorough investigation but a trustworthy agency. Uh, oh... I guess we'll never know.


UPDATE: SO... WHO MURDERED HER?

Read the comments below. Read a report from Fox. There will be conspiracy theories about this forever-- which doesn't mean she wasn't murdered. Larry Flynt, when asked if she was assassinated: "I personally believe that's what happened, but I have no proof." That about sums it up for most of us.