Obama - Statesman, Or Charismatic Invertebrate

As the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Senator Obama is the de facto leader of the Democratic Party. Senator Obama was selected as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review; he later taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago for twelve years. So why has Senator Obama now caved in the fight to defend the Constitution and the Fourth Amendement from the corporate sovereignty FISA amnesty bill? Why has he caved before the Senate debate even began?

Where's Obama the Constitutional Law lecturer?

As even Harry Reid and no-table Nancy Pelosi know, the Democratic Party controls the legislative calendar and agenda in the House and Senate. The Dem leaders have the same power the Rethugs once had to dtermine what legislative vehicles are allowed to drive onto the calendar. Today that power allowed no-table Nancy and the other Dem leaders to chose to bring FISA to come to floor and limit time for "debate" to an hour. Even though I'm reading sixty Senators may be so in the telcomms' pockets that they would support a cloture motion to close off a filibuster on FISA amnesty, Senator Reid can still keep the damn thing from the Senate floor.

Where's Obama?

As soon as no-table Nancy succeeded in getting the House to replace the Constitution with corporate sovereignty pass the FISA amnesty, the Great Smiling Hope from Chicago stepped up to the plate...and pissed on both the Constitution and any pretense that criminal law applies not only to us proles but also to the megacorps who own the Village pols.

[The FISA amnesty] does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward.....

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise.

Sure. Because we can all trust the secret findings of the IG's who work for the State criminals security services who spent years listening to us on in violation of Federal law.

The day before Obama tugged his forelock in deference to his corporate masters, Kagro X pointed out Senators have great power to slow down the Dem leaders' despicable scramble to sell the Constitution to the telcomm megacorps:

[If] one Senator attempted to "hold" the bill, the bill's supporters would make a motion to proceed, which can overcome the "hold" (which is itself just another form of objecting to unanimous consent). The motion to proceed, however, is itself subject to a filibuster. And if a Senator did in fact begin a filibuster of the motion to proceed, although a cloture motion could shut him or her down, the Senate by rule must wait two days before voting on cloture, and even if cloture is invoked, it still allows for 30 additional hours of

Proud to be a strange bedfellow

Today Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, the ACLU, and the Break The Matrix wizards united to defend us against the telcomms.

Why do we need defense? Because Stenny Hoyer and the corrupt House and Senate leadership are in the telcomms' pocket - that's why the Dem leadership are allowing the corrupt FISA "reform" to come to a vote.

The leaders could stop the vote - the fact they have not shows that they wish to allow their telcomm paymasters immunity from our criminal justice system.

The strange bedfellows campaign defends us from corporate rule, while our elected Congressional "leaders" take telcomm pay to engineer corporate sovereignty.

I'm happy to jump in with the strange bedfellows.

Please join us.

Health professionals snub Arnold and Medical Board: We don't do executions.

This morning I hear that a condemned man was still alive because two anesthesiologists honored our the values of our ancient calling and refused to participate in murder.

Tonight the BBC tells me the execution has been postponed indefinitely because the State of California "could not find a California licensed health professionals who would help carry out the sentence."

The condemned prisoner has been convicted of heinous offenses; many say such a person deserves death.

When I served as a consultant with an oncology teams and transplantation services I often hear people say that those who died deserved to live.

I believe that.

And I believe that Tolkien - after he survived the trenches of the "Great War" to find "by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead" - saw death and horror beyond the grasp of those now slathering at the prospect of yet another ritual murder in San Quentin.

And I think of Tolkien' s vison and wisdom, in the person of Gandalf's reply to the observation that the murderer Gollum deserved death.

"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve death. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

I just heard the BBC repeat that the State of California - the iconic home of the world's sixth (or seventh) largest economy has indefinitely postponed an execution because among twenty-four million people the State "could not find a California licensed health professionals who would help carry out the sentence."

Arnold and his blood-soaked handlers from the Rove camp have scant claim to wisdom - and you can bet they didn't see this stunning rebuke coming. Arnold still hasn't finished choking down the fist sandwich the California nurses gave him when they tore him a new one and fed him the remnants of his ass in last fall's referendum.

Now Arnold - running on the Nixon-era "law and order" program the GOP trundles out with Libby as a backdrop - will approach an election as the Teutonic spokesperson for official murder conducted in the most sterile and efficient manner.

Arnold will attempt to do this while avoiding the "entitled arrogant rich bastard above the law" label (despite motorcycling without a license for decades) and embracing the meme of "crime fighter".

Who knows - maybe Arnold will start sleuthing to find what Cheney was really drinking when he shot a 78 year old man in the face?

Memes for the Magna Carta

Reading the recent discussion on fdl about branding, messaging, and related subjects reminds me how many thoughtful people are working to help the progressive majority retake control of our nation.

I grew up in California, and I've lived most of my life here. I've seen the destruction left behind when a genial smiling fellow with twinkling eyes told jokes and (usually invented) tales crafted to touch on basic memes of great power.

Reagan's "welfare queen with a Cadillac" tale became an article of faith despite the fact it was a complete fabrication because it touched an odious and vile stereotype based in the nation's deep-seated racism.

The meme of racism is evil and indefensible, and I deplore those who use it.

Other older and more powerful memes are far more palatable - and surprisingly relevant.

But why memes? Why won't talking points and reasoned debates suffice? Why not appear to our higher cognitive selves, rather than our more primitive bestial selves?

Um, two reasons:

(1) Fact based explanations/descriptions lose to emotionally powerful stories. Stories have characters - other primates we primates can identify with. Fact based explanations have lifeless data. We primates would rather watch the other primates (or listen to stories about them) than read books with data.

(Those who assert otherwise may wish to consult current advertising rates for "news" vs. "entertainment" programs....or just try teaching medicine to very bright medical students. The "case-based" teaching invites questions - the "textbook" recitations induce slumber.)

(2) Er...as we are animals, we have "bestial selves" (what us docs call "the body"). Our bodies are thoughtfully equipped with all sorts of squishy bits like hearts and lungs and adrenal glands and skeletal muscles and sphincters and all sorts of other parts that respond differently depending upon whether we or scared or happy.

(No, this piece isn't about THAT sort of happy .)

Because of our critter selves, we respond to information (good news or bad news) with physiologic responses like changes in heart rate, respiratory rate, muscular tension. Our state of physical being (running fast vs stretched out on the beach) helps determine the emotional state we assign to an experience.

Most critically, our emotional state has immense impact upon the meaning - the subjective component - we associate with a given piece of cognitive information.

(Running to the arms of your beloved - anticipate pleasure = feel happy.

Running from arms and teeth of chimpanzees - anticipate being killed = feel scared.

To those gentle readers for whom running to beloved = running to chimpanzees, I support you in the pursuit of couples therapy and/or veterinary assistance.)


So who cares and what does this have to do with memes and messaging?

Well, part of our hard-wiring ensures that a very strong emotional state will divert us from the cognitive sphere in which we are most apt to manipulate abstract hunks of fact and data.

Our evolution rewards the organisms who stay alive long enough for successful creation of progeny. Finding fun stuff (food and sex) is necessary over the long term (say today or this week). Avoiding really bad stuff (like getting killed) is absolutely essential every moment in order to maintain a future for one's gametes.

This rather forbidding bit of "back story" helps illustrate why our emotional hard wiring is quite good at responding with fear, anger, derision, and other uncomfortable subjective responses to new stimuli.

This back story also helps to explain why these strong basic "distress" emotions have the capacity to divert us out of "thinking" mode.

Running humans are harder to eat than standing humans.

We progressives have a very appealing, altruistic message which incorporates:

- respect for working people and families (home and next generation)

- support for working mothers (hearth and babies)

- support for local communities ("small-town America")

- support for small business against corporate predators ("support the American dream")

- preservation of Social Security (we love grandparents!)

- care for the weakest among us (look - we take heed of Christ's teachings with welfare)

- care for the sick (we take heed of Christ's teachings with Medicare and Medi-cal)

- the right to safe and clean air, water, food, and homes (we protect the weak and future generations)

- defeating fascism (FDR and Truman and the "Greatest generation" - all squarely in the context of the foregoing memescape).

Despite - really because of - that powerful and compelling message, the most powerful economic forces on the planet have found they cannot win a fact-based debate.

Ever since Goldwater's loss in 1964, the deepest pockets have been paying compliant, clever minds to craft tools of mass manipulation.

Those tools include the highly emotive echo chambers of talk radio and similar meme factories.

We talk policy, they wave racist pictures of convicted felons, and we lose.

Now I'm hearing about a message of "competence".

Take it from a competent nerd: people don't get excited about you because you have mastered facts and skills.

People remember stories, not data.

We have been given the great gift of not one but two stories, each of which carries a separate powerful meme:

"Incompetent selfish rich bastard"

(Cheney can't even shoot right with a hired hunt and a $28,000 Italian shotgun. Yep, we're jest good ol' boys out for a hunt. With the US Ambassador to Switzerland).

"Dangerous arrogant rich bastard"

(err- for explanation, see fdl from the last several days)

These memes have deep roots, a long cultural history, and connect to very primal emotions.

I look forward to the time when affirming progressive values provide the implicit frame work for any political debate and we are all faced with the happy task of finding a way to convey messages based on appeal to our best qualities.

February of 2006 is not that time, and we face the unhappy task of defending the Constitution, nation, and biosphere from an Administration publicly devoted to the overthrow of Constitutional government and the few remaining checks on corporate power.

Dick Cheney's lethal mix of suspicion, secrecy, greed, and arrogance has been the recipe for the catastrophic fare Bush has cooked up and pushed at us over the last six years.

Public response and interest to Cheney's "shooting accident" - an outside the Beltway story with easily recognized themes and a villain - is forcing the media which to stay on focused on Cheney's faults.

As Rummy would say, that's a target-rich environment.

After years of fact-based messaging which stoked the wonks, satisfied all of the Dems' interest groups, were utterly inoffensive and were perfect in every respect except for utterly lacking efficacy - after years of that, I'm celebrating the current wave of jokes and contempt now affixed to "Brand Cheney".

If the dangerous incompetent rich bastard meme was powerful enough to force King John to sign the Magna Carta, let's use it to stop the idiot Prince George from tearing up the Carta and the Constitution.

Then we can use the dangerous incompetent rich bastard meme and the visceral contempt and disgust it fuels to tear up the documents we don't give a damn about - the tyrannical laws which gut our Constitution and the corrupt regulations enabling corporations to loot our nation and poison and sicken us and future generations.

I look forward to altruism, but I also look forward to the sort of winning campaign built on powerful progressive memes.

Enough messaging for wonks and consultants. Enough messaging.

Let's sit down and start telling stories.

Novice blogger rejects Google link- when he figures out how....

If any kind soul can let me know how to find the links menu on blogger and get rid of that flippin' google link, I'll be grateful.

-------------------------------------------------------

Cooperating with the censors and secret police - in China.

Or anywhere.

No thanks, Google

CA Medical Board ignores executioner docs: "We don't get involved in ethical violations"

As soon as I learned of the ethically repulsive plan for physicians to actively participate in putting a human being to death I called the CA State Medical Board.

The woman who answered the phone at the Board's complaint line (1-800-633-2322) told me the Board does not consider ethical violations, only violations of law.

The Board sends out a quarterly report recounting all the disciplinary actions taken against physicians. Physicians in California have lost their licenses for consensual sexual relationships and consensual business deals with patients (and rightly so - those relations with patients are an abuse of the doctor-patient relationship).

So the Board will pull someone's license for consensual sex with patients or sharing a business - but if the physician particpates in the extremely non-consensual act of deliberately ending the life of an unwilling person - well that doc is home free with the Medical Board.

The person at the Board evinced no concern whatsoever for this matter or its implications for patients.

The person at the Board did say that ethical matters may be referred to the physician's speciality medical society - which in this case would be the anesthesiologists.

Of course, specialists are not obligated to join these societies. And the only way to report the two anesthesiologists who participate in the killing of the prisoner would be
to know their names - which San Quentin will not release.

So I have a question for the Medical Board - if cannabalism isn't illegal in California, and we have docs engaging in consensual cannabalism with patients who survive the procedure without complications - are those docs OK to practice in California?

When the physicans who aided and abetted torture of human beings in Abu Gharaib, "Gitmo", or wherever come to California after military service, will the Board allow ex-torturers to start caring for patients? Hey - Alberto Gonzales tells us it's all legal - no criminal activity here.

So if you call the medical board, maybe they can explain to you - if executioners can be doctors, why not torturers? Why not cannibals?

Heck, it's just that pesky ethical stuff - why should the citizens of California assume the Board thinks physicians' ethics are relevant to patient care?

Born on the day.....

The Senate voted 97-3 against Russ Feingold's resistance to the Patriot act

Senator Roberts announced the "delay" of hearings into the massive illegal wiretap programs.

The Kenedy County Sheriff "cleared" Cheney of any criminal culpability in shooting a 78 year old man in the face a few hours after using alcohol. The Sheriff was so confident there was nothing to be seen that he didn't go out to look until eighteen hours later.

Those "missing" emails Special Prosecutor Fitgerald did not receive are "found" in the office of Bush's long-time personal counsel, Attorney General Gonzales.

Bush and Gonzales flunkies say there is no reason to recuse Gonzales from any investigatons into Bush's criminal wiretaps.



So it seems like a good day to start blogging on the slouch to Empire.

If the destination doesn't sound good to you, either - welcome.

Let's change course.