The most predominant mentality in right-wing discourse finds expression in this form: "I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X -- my group -- is better than all others yet treated so very unfairly." This claim persists -- indeed, is often intensified -- even when Group X is clearly the strongest, most privileged and most favored group. So intense is their need for self-victimization -- so inebriating is their self-absorption and so lacking are they in any capacity for empathy -- that, for all the noise and rhetoric, the arguments they make virtually always have this tribalistic self-absorption at its core.

Last week, Charles Krauthammer accused President Obama of treating every country in the world so well -- except for one, the one for which Krauthammer bears great love and affection and with which he was taught from childhood to identify:

President Obama repeatedly insists that American foreign policy be conducted with modesty and humility. Above all, there will be no more "dictating" to other countries. . . . An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone -- Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity.

The U.S. transfers tens of billions of dollars to Israel -- more than any other country in the world. We demand that no country in the Middle East have nuclear weapons -- except Israel. We fuel Israel's wars with weapons transfers, ensure it is the most militarily powerful country in its region, and loyally protect it from U.N. sanctions using our veto power. It's virtually impossible to imagine one country that is more favorably treated by another than the various forms of largesse Israel receives from the U.S. But no matter. In Krauthammer's eyes, the opposite is true: the U.S. treats every country fairly except Israel. That's the country that, to him, is singled out for unfavorable treatment by the U.S. Israel is the victim of unfair treatment at the hands of Obama.

Identically, in his column today, Krauthammer attacks Obama for daring in his Cairo speech to suggest that the U.S. has done bad things in the past and has contributed to the hostilities between the U.S. and the Muslim world. As a result of Obama's statement of the obvious -- that the U.S. also bears responsibility for the enmity that exists -- Obama stands accused in Krauthammer's column of "a disturbing ambivalence about his own country." To Krauthammer, Obama's sins include "transcultural evenhandedness," "moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics" and "creating false equivalencies."

Here again we find the same adolescent self-absorption: the group into which I was born and was instructed from childhood to believe is the best -- America -- is, objectively, superior. It is so much better than everyone and everything else that even to suggest that we have flaws comparable to others is to engage in "false moral equivalencies." To do anything other than emphatically proclaim my group's objective superiority is to treat my group unfairly [leave to the side the irony that the same people who want to suppress torture photos because they don't want to inflame anti-American sentiment apparently want the U.S. President to announce to the Muslim world that we are superior to them, have no serious flaws, have made no meaningful mistakes, and that everything is their fault -- that sort of pompous self-glorification won't inflame anti-American sentiment at all].

Ahmadinejad wins landslide in disputed election
by CNN

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a landslide election victory despite protests by his main challenger of "blatant violations."

Ahmadinejad won 62.63 percent of the vote while chief rival Mir Hossein Moussavi received 33.75 percent, the Iranian government said Saturday.

Before the final results were announced Moussavi addressed the people of Iran in a sharply worded letter. "I recommend to the authorities that before it is late to stop this process immediately, and to return to the path of the rule of law and the holding of the public trust through the votes of the people," he said.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, called the voters' turnout a show of Iran's "pride" and "honor."

Sadeq Mahsouli, the country's interior minister, on Saturday lauded the "unprecedented" turnout. He had said 70 percent of 46 million eligible voters had gone to the polls. Turnout could have been as 80 percent of eligible voters, Iran's poll chief said.

The Islamic Republic News Agency said Ahmadinejad will address the nation Saturday night.

Analysts had expected Moussavi, widely regarded as a reformist, to do well as his campaign caught fire in recent days, triggering massive street rallies in Tehran.

Voting was supposed to end after 10 hours, but because of the massive turnout, officials initially said polling stations would remain open until everyone in line had a chance to vote. However, Moussavi alleged that doors were being closed with people still waiting outside.

Some private news agencies reported many Iranians were milling about on the streets late into the night. Mehr reported that the chief of police declared public gatherings of candidate supporters illegal.

Earlier in the day, voters crowded the steps of one polling place in Tehran, some waiting more than three hours underneath the hot sun to cast their ballots. Some were lining up even before the polls opened at 8 a.m.

Moussavi was the main challenger among three candidates vying to replace Ahmadinejad. The other candidates were former parliament speaker and reformist Mehdi Karrubi, and Mohsen Rezaie, the former head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Ahmadinejad has staunch support in Iran's rural areas, but has been blamed for much of Iran's economic turmoil over the last four years.

Fawaz Gerges, an academic and author who studies the region, said Friday's vote is really "a referendum on Ahmadinejad," who has been in office since 2005.

"The unemployment rate is 30 percent ... the largest in the third world, inflation is [in the] double digits in Iran," Gerges told CNN's "American Morning."

"We focus in the United States a great deal on his inflammatory rhetoric on the Holocaust, on nuclear weapons. We tend to forget that Ahmadinejad has basically done a great deal of damage to the Iranian economy, on social policy."

While Moussavi's campaign energized key segments of Iranian voters -- particularly women -- Gerges noted that "Iranians have surprised us many times."

Von Brunn as a 'Lone Wolf': Killers act alone, but these are not 'isolated incidents'
by David Neiwert

When the Department of Homeland Security issued that law-enforcement bulletin on right-wing extremists two months ago, the mainstream right's chief shrieking point was that somehow the bulletin had conflated them with the extremist right-wingers.

Some typical headlines: "DHS Report Labels Conservatives as Radical Extremists". "The DHS Declares Everyone In America Is A Domestic Terrorist". "DHS To Target Conservatives." "New DHS Domestic Terrorism Report Targets Millions of Americans". And on and on. The upshot: Homeland Security was labeling conservatives America's chief terrorist threat.

But if you read the actual report, here's what it says is the chief domestic-terror threat America faces:

DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Information from law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.

[..] DHS/I&A has concluded that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy—separate from any formalized group—which hampers warning efforts.

[..] Similarly, recent state and municipal law enforcement reporting has warned of the dangers of rightwing extremists embracing the tactics of “leaderless resistance” and of lone wolves carrying out acts of violence.

Now, here's the odd thing about "lone wolves": Right-wingers like to use the solitary nature of this kind of terrorist act to dismiss them as "isolated incidents." But in reality, the continuing existence of acts of this nature demonstrates primarily that the radical right in America is alive, well, and functioning better than it should. And the continuing -- and as we've seen this week, ultimately futile -- attempts by the right to whitewash their existence from the public consciousness have played no small part in helping that trend continue.

Bush Lawyer Ordered to Testify
by JOHN SCHWARTZ

A federal judge has ruled that John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer who wrote crucial memorandums justifying harsh interrogation techniques, will have to answer in court to accusations that his work led to a prisoner’s being tortured and deprived of his constitutional rights. The government had asked Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco to dismiss the case filed by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in a military brig as an enemy combatant. Judge White denied most elements of Mr. Yoo’s motion and quoted a passage from the Federalist Papers that in times of war, nations, to be more safe, “at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”

For-Profit Insurers Must Be Banned from Basic Healthcare Market
by wigwam @ firedoglake

Managers of for-profit insurance corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits, which they do by cherry-picking the healthiest customers with lower prices, driving insurers who cover the sick to ever higher prices. Eventually there’s no affordable insurance for those who need it most. (For details on how this works, see Wikipedia's entry on "adverse selection.")

The major industrialized nations have figured this out and bans for-profit insurers from the basic healthcare market:

Last year, former Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid made a great documentary for the PBS show Frontline titled Sick Around the World.

Reid traveled to five countries that deliver health care for all – UK, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Taiwan – to learn about how they do it.

Reid found that the one thing these five countries had in common – none allowed for-profit health insurance companies to sell basic medical coverage.

[...] Reid’s bottom line for health care reform – don’t let health insurance companies profit from selling basic health insurance.

They can sell for-profit insurance for extras – breast enlargements, botox, hair transplants.

But not for the basic health needs of the American people. […]

In the United States of America, free-market for-profit capitalism an article of faith. But, while profit-based capitalism works well in some areas, it doesn't in the are of basic health insurance. But it appears that yet another generation of Americans is about to nail itself to that rugged free-market cross.

And finally...



It's past time to wake the fuck up!

M_A