[From the Frog Pond]

One of the things that the media and, often, the political elite do is to try to put our political discourse in a straitjacket. I've always thought that it was a sign of weakness that America created the House Un-American Activities Committee and other like committees.  It showed a certain lack of confidence in the superiority of American political and economic institutions to shut down people's ability to advocate for other systems.

Short diary, but I thought this would be a laugh, on a day when every is going nuts with the absurdity of last night.

I think we've all seen this video of Charlie Gibson heckled after the debate, and throwing up his hands saying, "The crowd is turning on me!"

Well, apparently the ABC line on it now is that they weren't booing the questioners, people were booing that they were cutting to commercial, because they crowd loved them so much.

http://dictionary.reference.com/...

Main Entry:   blowback
Part of Speech:   n
Definition:   an unintended adverse reaction or effect from an action or cause, especially political

I don't know about you guys, but I'm starting to feel a little righteous indignation rising up in me. The faux outrage and manipulation taking place in the public media these days is really looking obvious. I do believe that  Hannity and Rush jumped the shark with their all day made up tirade about the Blank Panther supporter on myobama yesterday.

I was already feeling threatened that the democratic party machine was going to somehow undermine the will of the people and take the nomination away from Obama, when the Wright videos came out.

My heart sank, and the knot in my stomach tightened when I saw them. They  seemed like 180 degrees from what Obama represents to me.

During the Republican debates, Ron Paul referred to the CIA concept of "Blowback," the unanticipated consequences of U.S. policy decisions abroad.  He was, of course, referring to the Middle East, and how fifty years of meddling (e.g., overthrowing governments, supporting despots, and inducing wars) MAY have led to resentment in the Middle East regarding America.

I see the Reverend Wright issue in much the same way.

The bile that spewed from Wright’s lips is simply "Blowback" from decades of discrimination, degradation, and occasionally outright inhumane treatment of Blacks by the U.S. government domestically.

Sadly for America’s conversation on race (which Obama hopes to catalyze and elevate), Whites have long forgotten these blips in the news.

Blacks, however, have never forgotten....

I think that Sen. Clinton gravely miscalculated the blowback from running a negative campaign.  As long as she was Hillary, recast in the role of the underdog, I think there was a massive outpouring of sympathy for her - from the mainstream media.  They watched what all believed was her inevitable nomination (coronation).  The loss was as traumatic for the press as it was for her, it seems.  They shielded her and avoided asking questions that should have been asked sooner.

I think the 'angry, vitriolic, accusatory' Hillary shocked the mainstream press and left them feeling betrayed.  They'd been running the narrative of a fighter in the last stages of a fight, dying slowly by the day.  THIS Hillary was one they didn't want to protect.  The woman who'd as indirectly, as Ferraro had directly, called Barack Obama an Affirmative Action candidate had gone too far.

The shine is OFF! She's now becoming the mythic/fictional/stereotypic Affirmative Action candidate.

They Didn't Hate Us Before!

Just One Of Tens of Thousands, NOW!!

Um Saad, a middle-aged woman living in the Sunni district of Khadra in west Baghdad, blames the Americans for the death of her husband and two of her sons and threatens revenge.

Hey you people ever notice that every time Hillary "goes negative" against Barack she does herself much more damage than she does to him...

As we end the year of the surge in Iraq, the dynamic is one of tense calm.  The US military armed and sustained these Sunni awakening groups, which is akin to wiring an IED that could go off at any moment.  The Awakening groups, numbering around 80,000, appear not fully trustful of the Americans, and distrustful of each other, in addition to being distrustful of the Shiite majority government.

Introduction

   September Eleventh, 2001 is a date that will go down in every history book.  Nineteen Saudi Arabs used America’s airplanes to kill approximately three thousand Americans.  Many will remember it as the day that their innocence was taken away.  Others will mourn those they lost.  It rocked America’s psyche and enraged a giant.  "A nation whose leaders had turned to world affairs only fitfully and whose people resisted foreign entanglements experienced a sudden surge in determination and a new sense of purpose".    

Simple proposition, right?

Well, maybe not so simple.

(alternates to the word "mess" passed over in respect for the Daily Kos community).

I am posting this diary as a short response to some of the comments I saw in thereisnospoon's excellent recommended diary.

Therein, I see a number of comments talking about how it's ok to be a proud centrist in the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: OK, it was meant to be short, but did not wind up that way.  My bad.

The Wall Street Journal has a heavily linked article up today reporting on what may turn out to be the most serious negative consequence of Elliot Abrams inept efforts to destabilize (or, in his words, to provoke a "hard coup" against) the legally elected Hamas government.

It turns out that when the Fatah goons cowardly fled their posts last month, they left behind massive quantities not only of firearms but also of sensitive papers documenting Fatah's

vast intelligence network in Gaza established under the tutelage of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hamas leaders claim to have in their possession

thousands of paper files, computer records, videos, photographs and audio recordings containing valuable and potentially embarrassing intelligence information gathered by Fatah.

More on the flip...

This is part one of an occasional series of reviews of the book The Search for a Nonviolent Future by Michael Nagler. The whole problem with our country is the fact that as a matter of policy, we have become too accustomed for the easy way out, or violence. It doesn't matter what kind of problem comes up, it has come to the point where we, as a country and as a government, have come to rely on air strikes as an easy way out.

As in "Lawrence of Arabia." While with the CIA, the current SecDef was Lord of Blowback.

In the same week as The Washington Post ran its landmark series "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," Asia Times Online, among other sites, featured a series about the Secretary of Defense called "The Gates Inheritance" by Roger Morris. It seems that, in spite of breaking the spell Rumsfeld cast on the Defense Department, Robert Gates, like fellow Iran-Contra veterans John Negroponte and Elliot Abrams, could do with an exorcism himself.

The CIA deputy director for intelligence in 1985, he was among those who advised Ronald Reagan to sanction a car bombing in Bir el-Abed, a Shi'ite ghetto of Beirut. It was intended as retaliation for the 1983 truck-bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks at Beirut airport that killed 241
servicemen.

For its part, Morris writes, that attack was a "reprisal for earlier US acts of intervention and diplomatic betrayal in Lebanon's civil war that had cost hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian lives." It also held the world record for the most massive peace-time blowback against the US until 9/11.

Mohammad Mosaddeq

How many Americans know that the CIA, in cahoots with British Petroleum, planned and executed a coup against Mohammad Mosaddeq, a democratically elected and popular Iranian leader, ushering in the dictatorial rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and his brutal secret police, SAVAK?

200 years ago, everyone called terrorists by another name: pirates
  - Washington Post

 For most Americans, every event is new and unprecedented in the world. That's because most American's grasp of history is deplorable.
 An embarrassingly large percentage of Americans are completely unaware that this isn't America's first global war with terrorism. To make matters worse, a large percentage of the public that is familiar with our first global war on terrorism is under the false impression that we won a clear victory.

Crossposted on my personal blog

If you've been paying any attention to the news lately you've no doubt heard about the Siniora (US friendly) government in Lebanon fighting hard against al-Qaeda tied group Fatah al-Islam (remember this name!) in norther Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp.

I mentioned that this Sunni extremist group sounded familiar:  That I was sure I had seen an article a few months back that told us how the US and UK were stupidly funding Sunni extremist groups in norther Lebanon (many with al-Qaeda ties) in order to harm Shia Iran and Shia Hezbollah's interests in Lebanon, and thus help the Siniora government.

Blowback Bros., financial giant behind the regimes of Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Islamic Jihad, will merge with Quagmires R Us to form Permanent WarMart, a war services and reconstruction firm. Recent failure of Blowback to prevent revelation of its connection to terrorist states proves the company profits in times of high visiblity of its criminal history and solidifies its reliance on its stock in trade, the gullibility of the American taxpayer. Blowback investments and operations are underwritten entirely by the taxpayers of the United States, who seem incapable deciphering their own liabilities.

Blowback, which controls most oil investment, transport, and communications services in the world, relies heavily on war and drug running for its base. Quagmires, which rebuilds after the catastrophes created by Blowback, provides what is seen as a perfect fit for hope, fear, and debt creation, conditions favorable to increased confusion on the part of the American taxpayer. Wholly owned subsidiaries of the new conglomerate will include the Federal Reserve Bank, ChevronTexaco, Saddam'sDebt.com, and the nation of Pakistan.