Raz Gets a Lesson (or Two)

First, praise is in order for whoever lined up guests for two shows on Saturday's All Thing's Considered. Guy Raz was hosting the show and for a report on Afghanistan's election NPR turned to "Jean MacKenzie, a correspondent for GlobalPost.com and the director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Afghanistan." To cover the forthcoming report on CIA torture Raz spoke with former CIA agent, Robert Baer.

Here's what happens when guests are not the usual parrots for the US military or government:

On the Afghanistan election:

RAZ: "Jean, we're hearing from some officials in Afghanistan, western officials, that this election has gone off better than expected, not much violence, high voter turnout, a free and fair process. Is that what you've been saying?"
Ms. MACKENZIE: (laughs out loud) "That sounds very far from the perception of people who have been intimately involved in the process, I would say. I think the threshold of success for this election has been getting lower and lower."

On the CIA report:

RAZ: "I mean, our country, Robert Baer, like other countries, sometimes has to do dirty things, right?"
Mr. BAER: "No. You know, this goes back to Nuremberg - the Nuremberg defense...."

It is really telling when a former CIA agent has to remind a journalist about Nuremberg and the rule of law (maybe there is hope after all) - and the outright laughter from Jean Mackenzie was one of the most honest moments I've heard on NPR all year.

Missing the Forest for the Acorn

If NPR had ever done any serious reporting on the unquestionable Republican fraud of the stolen 2000 election, or on the likely fraud of the 2004 election - then its Sunday morning feature piece on some of the problems with ACORN's voter registration drive would be more palatable. But NPR has done no investigative work on Republican-led election fraud and corruption, and - in Pravdaesque style - has actually praised the Republican corruption as an effort to stop voter fraud.

Steven Rosenfeld of AlterNet points out the trivial nature of problems with ACORN's voter registration errors and provides the context for this Republican farce - most notably the connection to the attorney firing scandal, connections that run right up to...the White House! This doesn't stop NPR from giving lots of airtime to Sean Cairncross, the Republican National Committee's chief legal counsel. You'd think he was talking about his bosses and the current administration - not ACORN - when he says:

• "It is at best a quasi-criminal...organization..."
• "Is a clear and present danger to the integrity of the election process."
• "...a threat to public safety."

NPR should be covering the role that this and other phony "voter fraud" charges play in the overall Republican strategy of undermining free and fair elections in the US - particularly since these efforts didn't end with the 2000 or 2004 elections, and - as this ACORN ploy reveals - will continue into and beyond this crucial November election.

Inskeep Squeaks

If you missed Steve Inskeep's interview with President Ahmadinejad of Iran on Wednesday morning, brace yourself.

First Inskeep (like the rest of the mainstream media - with the exception of, say, Larry King!) continues the the debunked allegation that Ahmadinejad wants to "wipe Israel off the map." He says, "You have spoken about wiping countries off the map...." and "As you know Mr. President, you are known in much of the world - and not only in the United States - as the man who wants to wipe Israel off the map. Are you?"

Ahmadinejad actually answers the question, and in doing so asserts the right of Palestinians to vote on how they want to be ruled - which he believes would lead to the dissolution of Israel as a Zionist state. This mention of elections prompts Inskeep to attack on Iran's presidential elections. He correctly and critically notes that Iranian candidates had to be approved by Iran's conservative Council of Guardians. From this critique he goes on to claim that in the US election for president "anyone may put his name on the ballot in the United States." That's pretty funny! He then mocks the eight choices for president that Iranians had, saying "...eight people and the political spectrum from about here to here - and I'm holding my fingers an inch apart..."

Inskeep obviously doesn't have a clue about who ran for Iranian president back in 2005. If he did, he would have noticed quite a diverse spectrum of ideology among the candidates. Ahmadinejad correctly notes that the US presidential election offers an even narrower range of ideological choices and he challenges Inskeep (fingers and all) by asking, "Why do you assume that your system is better than everybody else's?"

Caught red-handed (or red fingered in this case) Inskeep squawks, "I assume nothing Mr. President. I ask questions." The scariest part is that I think he actually believes this is true...

Joker Discusses Race Card

Bolivia is voting in a presidential and governorship recall vote and Juan Forero is there. Seabrook insists on telling us how to view the vote in Bolivia: "The referendum has exposed sharp divisions in Bolivia between those who support the President's socialist agenda and those who worry he's concentrating too much power in his own hands."

O.K., I'm sorry that's just too simplistic. She doesn't give any indication that Morales' administration is also opposed by the extremely wealthy and reactionary and racist elites in Bolivia who fear losing their right to exploit the indigenous poor for their own gain. No doubt that there are fears among the middle class of Bolivia that Morales is seeking too much power and is indifferent to their interests. A much better description of the situation is available from the Democracy Center blog; it also has better reporting on the results.

Seabrook does ask Forero, "And I understand race also plays a role?"

Given the really appalling racism of the opposition [on vivid display in May of this year], this is an important question (Imagine the coverage that such racist thuggery would garner if it were employed by Morales - or Chavez in Venezuela). Now take a look at Forero's duplicitous answer:

"It does. The government is very much allied with indigenous groups here....There is certainly an element of race in a lot of this, in this crisis among the two sides here because many opposition leaders - though not all - are of European extraction. But some analysts also say that Morales has been using the race card to sow divisions and paint his foes as racists - in other words delegitmize their concerns."

It's quite a performance really. It's not racism; it's just "because many opposition leaders - though not all - are of European extraction." Chew on that one for a while... And then not only does Forero minimize the racism of the opposition, he pulls out the ubiquitous "some analysts" to blame Morales for "using the race card." Scary.

For more leftist (and funny and irreverent) analysis on the situation it's hard to beat Borev.net.

Even the Good is Bad

Two short gripes for NPR's weekend coverage:

1. PEACE:

On Weakened Edition Saturday Michele Kelemen covers the pushed aside role that the US is enjoying in the Middle East. It's a story worth covering as Helena Cobban and Tony Karon have done more ably than NPR could hope to (Kelemen has to turn to "Richard Murphy who was the assistant Secretary of State for the Near East in the Reagan(!!!) years for her severest critic of the Bushist approach to the region.) But even in a critical piece Kelemen opens it with this winner:

"For a Secretary of State who has made Middle East peace a priority this year, Condoleezza Rice is sounding a bit more like an observer than a negotiator..."

Holy crap, if I had a dollar for every time NPR links the name of Bush or Rice to the search for "peace" I'd be as rich as...hmm, I don't know...Kevin Klose ($500,000+).


2. VOTING:

Ari Shapiro talks to Jacob Soboroff about the Florida election tragedy of 2000. Soboroff actually seems like a nice enough guy with his heart in the right place ( I mean the guy wants elections to be run fairly, and for turnout to be high, etc.) But the focus in this piece is all on the butterfly ballots and hanging chads of the Florida fiasco. There is nothing in this piece - or on Soboroff's Why Tuesday web site for that matter - about the real theft of democracy by the Republican-right that Florida was: the nasty story of removing African American voters, the collusion of Diebold and Choicepoint, and the Republican mob suppression of the recount, the fact that Al Gore actually would have won a statewide recount, etc., etc., etc. Ah, but that is so pre-2001 isn't it?

More Florida, More Fraud

Sometimes I'll see the headline of a story on NPR's website and think, "Oh man, they really are going to cover an issue I thought they'd never cover." I missed hearing most of Saturday's ATC and looking at the list of stories saw the commentary/feature "A History of Disenfranchised Florida Voters."

I was stunned. Was NPR going to turn away from its usual complicity in covering up documented fraud and disenfranchisement in the 2000 and 2004 elections? Would it turn away form its previous Orwellian praise of orchestrated Republican vote fraud?

No such luck. NPR dips back into its shallow bucket of shallow commentators - Diane Roberts again. Yes, the same Diane Roberts who found the Republican scam of Florida's 2000 election to be such a rich source of humor. This time she's interested in bringing up a bit of interesting 19th century history, while thoroughly distorting more recent events (I'd say that qualifies her to air on NPR). She lumps the 2000 Republican election fraud in Florida with general "electoral screw-ups" and describes the 2000 election problems as being "dangling chads, the missing ballots, and the all-too-present lawyers." She has the gall to claim that "rent-mobs from both parties protested outside our courthouses" when in fact only the Republicans brought in a mob that actually forced the end of the hand-counting of votes - counting that would have proved that Bush lost the Florida vote.

Ah but that was sooooo long ago.

Devine Intervention

Scott Simon was chatting this morning with Tad Devine about Democratic Party super delegates. Simon mentioned that Devine was there at the creation of the super delegates following the 1980 election cycle. Here's what Devine had to say:

"They were created for a number of reasons.....a feeling at the time that the activists who were getting elected as delegates at the time during the 70s and 80s really didn't reflect the mainstream of the Democratic Party and that these elected officials [super delegates] would actually be more representative of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. And they were also picked so there would be some mechanism to make sure that there was...a backstop in case someone who was way outside the mainstream was going to be the nominee...."

I about fell out of my chair. This was great. Here was a Democratic Party insider explaining how the super delegate mechanism was created to thwart the voting of the Democratic rank and file activists in the name of some mythical "mainstream" (trans. = center-right, pro-business, etc.) Surely, any interviewer worth his or her salt would home in on these comments, ask some follow-ups, ask for details, clarification, etc. But, I forget, Scott Simon is the one performing this interview.

It would have also been interesting to bring up the string of inspiring "mainstream" candidates that Mr. Backstop has championed. On Devine's biography, available as a Word document here, we learn that Devine

• "in 1980...worked on President Carter’s reelection campaign as a delegate tracker."
• "Deputy Director of Delegate Selection in the nomination campaign of former Vice President Walter Mondale and Executive Assistant to the Campaign Manager in the 1984 general election."
• "served as Director of Delegate Selection and Field Operations in the nomination campaign of Governor Michael Dukakis."
• "In 1992, Tad Devine was Campaign Manager for Senator Bob Kerrey’s campaign for President."
• "In the 2000 general election, Mr. Devine served as a senior strategist to the Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign and oversaw the day-to-day management of the campaign."
  
• "In 2004, Mr. Devine served as a senior advisor and strategist to Senator John Kerry’s campaign for President."

Quite a track record of inspiring (and winning!) candidates and campaigns. A good reporter might have asked if a glance outside the "mainstream" might not have been a good idea...unless that reporter is so steeped in center-right ideology that such a concept wouldn't even enter his narrow mind.

Piling On

Here's Cokie Roberts, buckraking journalist, this morning discussing the modest proposal of Senator Russ Feingold to censure Bush and Cheney ( a motion that is long overdue):

"The Congress could seem to be ineffectual, or they could seem to be overreaching. Yesterday Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin proposed a censure resolution for the President and Vice President condemning their actions in Iraq and other things....things like that, if the Democrats seem to be just piling on a President who's already at remarkably low approval ratings on a war that the public has turned their backs on. The Democrats pile on on that that could be a problem."

If this doesn't make you want to toss your cokies cookies, what will?

Monkeying Around with the News

NPR is at it again--making up an issue where none exists, and thereby avoiding issues of real substance. They did it immediately after the 2006 elections by trying to sell the idea that the elections were all about "bipartisanship" (and not the Iraq war) and this morning John Ydstie and Mara Liasson were going to the heart of a big issue; the "frustrations" with too many candidates in a debate. Honest, I'm not making this up; here's Ydstie getting it started:

"...this large group of [Republican] presidential hopefuls...the Democratic field is almost as large....The question is does the sheer size of the field affect what voters can learn about the candidates." To bring Liasson into the conversation, Ydstie asks, "Is it necessary to have so many candidates?"

In her response Liasson concludes, "...that does cause some frustration, not just on the part of voters who are watching and maybe want to hear more from the candidates, but it also causes some frustration among the candidates who want more time to get their message out...." She does note that the greater number of candidates allows the lesser known candidates an "opportunity to break out of the second tier."

An interesting fact is that if you look around on the web and in the news, you find virtually nothing about concerns regarding too many candidates debating. And why should you? What you do find is a lot of concern with the Kremlinesque control over the Presidential debates exercised by the two major parties when the election season heats up - oops, exercised by the two major parties' corporate-funded surrogate, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD).

I should also note that this phony issue of "frustration" with too many candidates was launched on NPR a few days ago by Dan Shore. In his "analysis" he dishonestly states, "Ron Paul of Texas broke ranks by suggesting that the United States may have invited the 9/11 attacks by bombing Iraq in the 1990s." The term "invite" is obviously loaded and was never used by Paul (it was used by one of the moderators and then picked up with gusto by Guliani). You can read the exchange here and decide for yourself. What obviously irks Shore is any dissent from the extremely narrow limits of acceptable discussion that a controlled front-runner debate enforces. Ah, but Dan Shore knows what's good for us: "It strikes me that the public would be better served by ending the early candidate debates in favor of more extensive head-to-head debates between the Democratic and Republican nominees...I can remember such debates...as being more fruitful."

Golden Boy is a Killer

I know I'm in trouble when I find myself in agreement with the Republican voice on an NPR story. On Friday's ATC, NPR revisits Rahm Emmanuel, who was their "golden boy" following the November 2006 elections. Last night's NPR's piece continues the debunked myth that Emmanuel won the House for Democrats, but mainly the report by Michele Norris is all about Emmanuel's personality and his tactics for fundraising. From his biographer we hear that, "half of his right middle finger has been cut off, and that creates this tough guy image. He did a stint working for the Israeli army in a civilian capacity during the first Gulf War...things like that make him seem like a killer..." The main thing we learn in this report is that Rahm believes in "winning."

Norris does interview Rob Simmons, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut, who lost his seat in a tight midterm race. He comments, "One of the problems that I think the Democrats have, that Rahm Emmanuel has not helped them with, is their fundemental core values and beliefs. It’s all very fine to come up with new strategies, new tactics, fundraising or blogging or this kind of stuff – but if you don’t have a strategic vision about what your party is all about, what you want America to be in fifteen or twenty years, then you still have substantial weaknesses."

Yes, wouldn't it be great if NPR poked around in the moral universe of Rahm and other political operatives - instead of treating politics like a horse race where all that matters is who's ahead, who's raising more money, and who wins? I would have loved to hear Rahm explain how serving with the Israeli Army squares with oft trumpeted line of the US as broker between Israel and Palestinians. Norris might have asked about Rahm's earlier defense of Bush and the Iraq War. It would have been interesting to ask him about the clearly mixed results of his campaigning in November elections (see the PDA Nov. 21 2006 article here.) and to explore the nature of his more progressive successor to the DCCC. That would be asking a lot of NPR; it would be asking for substance over surface...

And the Other Five?

Last week on one of NPR's newscasts a letter from a listener was read complaining about the coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign focusing so heavily how much money has been raised--and then the next morning NPR ran another story about who was ahead in the money chase...

This morning was a pathetic attempt at analysis with Juan Williams "weighing in." As it turns out the Democrats are holding a debate on Thursday in South Carolina and listening to NPR you'd swear there were three candidates in the running--Obama, Clinton and Edwards. Well, I'm sick of NPR not offering its listeners enough information about the candidates and the issues. In a four minute piece we got to hear all about opinion polls for Clinton and Edwards $400 dollar haircut--so what! And not even a mention of Gravel, Kucinich, Richards, Dodd or Biden. Even the local NBC station gets the idea that you name all the candidates and they even have links to their positions--imagine that!

Eyes on the Lies

Listeners to NPR this morning could be forgiven for being befuddled by the analysis of Juan Williams and Deborah Amos. Their discussion of the US attorney firings scandal is a tour de force in doublespeak and mangled logic. Amos gets things rolling with this Orwellian assertion: "…in fact voter fraud has been a focus of Republicans for some time." She might be forgiven if she were saying that committing voter fraud was the "focus of Republicans" but, alas she's not.

Does Juan Williams, the author of Eyes on the Prize, set the record straight? Not a chance; he takes the baton and is off and running, claiming that - for Republicans - voter fraud has been "a concern of theirs for decades. Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist began his public career as a young lawyer in Arizona- this is half a century ago – serving as a poll watcher for the GOP there."

Reread that if you can! Fresh, young lawyer Rehnquist starting out as a humble citizen watching the polls down in Arizona: it's almost a Norman Rockwell painting - except that Rehnquist the racist was in Arizona trying to suppress minority voters, something he continued to do for the rest of his career (culminating in the seizure of the Presidency for Boy George in 2000).

Williams mercilessly soldiers on, "Basically, wherever reports have suggested that people were voting illegally, Republicans have tried to get the law to address the problem or the perception of a problem." Tried to get the law to address the problem - Holy *#%& ! Honestly, I couldn't make this stuff up.

As if aware of the perversity of his assertions, Williams does qualify things a bit: "Let me say here that a recent Election Assistance Commission report said the extent of voter fraud is open to debate today. That report was edited to downplay the expert conclusion that there’s little actual voting fraud taking place." (It was edited all right.) Williams notes that for Republicans "there’s a focus on putting in place voter identification programs" which he observes "reduces voter turnout especially among minorities."

Amos isn't about to let this one go that way. She asks, "And how does this ballot integrity make Democrats react?" Ballot integrity? That is a serious case of turning a phrase on its head, especially considering that the Ballot Integrity Project counters everything that the Republican intimidators have been trying to do.

Laughing out loud Williams answers Amos's question, "Well - absolutely drives them crazy! They see it as voter suppression." (Oh, those cwazy Democrats.)

Amos wraps this one up with a real prize winner: "So when a Republican-appointed US attorney investigates and says, 'No, there’s not a lot of voter fraud, or only a few cases not worth pursuing,' the Justice Department gets caught in the middle." Huh? Caught in the middle? Go figure...

Big White Lie

Yesterday afternoon NPR's Michelle Norris reported on Florida s latest moves to rescind parts of its laws stripping felons of their voting rights. This report was remarkable for what went unsaid. First, no mention was ever given to the role that felon disenfranchisement played in the Jim Crow south. Secondly, and perhaps even more shocking, is that there was not one reference made to the pivotal role of fraudulent felon disenfranchisement carried out in Florida (as noted in The Nation, Mother Jones, Salon.com, and the AP) during the stolen election of 2000 which put George Bush in the White House. It's a stunning omission. It would be like reporting on Army Corps of Engineers flood projects without mentioning the debacle of the levee failures in New Orleans.

I thought perhaps that I was being a bit hard on NPR and that maybe they had given coverage to the fraud of the Florida "scrub lists" in the election of 2000, but if you search "DBT" (the company that carried out the scam) on NPR's website you get NOTHING! If you search "Database Technology" (the full name of the company) you do get ONE decent report by Phillip Martin from December 2000--but there is nothing else, no follow up whatsoever.

Bizarre Is a Relative Term

Reporting on the contentious swearing in of Mexico's formal president, Calderon, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro describes the scene as follows:

"Like some bizarre cheerleader’s duel, congressmen then cried out to each other in the ensuing hours. On one side of the hall leftist legislators shouted 'Obrador!' over and over…on the other, members of Calderon’s party responded 'Mexico! Mexico!'..."

If only we could have some bizarre cheerleading in our airtight system. Instead we have Al Gore's 2001 gavel-pounding performance (sounds eerily like nails being driven into a coffin) which proved to David Wellna that Gore was "a good sport" who "came off very well."

Scandal My #$+*%!

NPR does have perseverance. They have found yet another angle for trying to bury the voter's revolt of the 2006 midterms (see earlier post). This morning they turn to Lanny Davis, former Clinton advisor, who has written a book about scandal in American politics. Davis tells us that during the last decade "there was vitriol on the left and the right unlike anything seen in America for many years. I saw a revolt of the center and I think we’ve seen the great center of American politics coming back together again." And later, "in the last election the American people are starting to say we need to do it differently."

There are several starkly obvious questions that a decent journalist might ask Mr. Davis:

• What polling data do you base your conclusions on?
• What "left" in American politics are you talking about--or do you mean the center right Clinton administration that you were a part of?
• Are you suggesting that a scandal of sexual harassment between a President and an adult intern and his lies before a grand jury about it is equivalent to the scandals of "fixing intelligence" for launching a war, eavesdropping on Americans without court approval, issuing torture guideline memos, and setting up clandestine prisons?

Of course that is exactly what Davis and the NPR reporters are suggesting. For whatever reason NPR is working hard to create the lie that the midterm elections were a call for "bipartisanship" and not the call for the end to the occupation of Iraq and CORRUPTION in politics that polls have shown.

It's as if NPR has launched it's own preemptive strikes against any movement to quickly end the occupation of Iraq and to investigate the Bush administration and hold it accountable for behaviors that clearly fit the "high crimes and misdemeanor" standards for impeachment written into our Constitution.

Do THE Math

A few days ago Karl Rove told Robert Siegel that whatever polls Siegel was looking at didn't matter because he - Karl Rove - had "THE Math." And then today on Morning Edition Mara Liasson and a guest commentator were discussing the poll numbers that continue to indicate that Republicans will lose (at least) the House in November voting. Liasson, commenting on Republican optimism, wondered "if they know things we don’t know," and was quick to remind listeners that "polls are not predictions." These sorts of statements really are maddening! NPR should be doing the work of discussing and investigating the kinds of voting manipulations and fraud that were so fruitful to Republicans in 2000 and 2004 (see previous post).

Given the incredibly dismal state of affairs in Iraq/Afghanistan and the pathetic growth of the middle income wages, and the Foley scandal, etc... it really is hard to imagine the Republicans holding on to power in both houses of Congress. November's voting will be an interesting test of whether the Republican machine can pull off a really big steal (surely, ripping off so many unexpectedly challenged seats will be harder than targeting a few key states such as Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004 to only[!] steal the presidency.)

If NPR was at least reporting on the facts that are known about cage lists, challenging voters, uncounted votes, and Republican-connected Diebold junk voting machines, then people might not be so complacent when election results fly in the face of reality.

I'm very hopeful about the November vote, but I also have a nagging sense of dread that I'll wake up Wednesday, November 8th, to hear how Republicans have pulled off a stunning upset by "defying the experts" and have kept both houses of Congress. And instead of angry citizens taking to the streets to as in Mexico, it will be quiet and secure in the Homeland as Mara Liasson reminds us (as she did today) that Republicans succeeded because they have the "advantages in turning out their vote and money," and they are better than Democrats at "finding and targeting voters" -- I'll say!

Throw Out the Vote

Yesterday on ATC, Mara Liasson ran a story that presents an unfounded assertion--if not an outright lie--as if it were fact. She stated that in 2004 the Republicans had "a highly centralized and very effective program to identify and turnout voters; in 2004 it helped them win even in the face of strong national antiRepublican sentiment." This might fly if not for Greg Palast and the BBC. You see, Greg Palast doesn't just assert that the Republican's cheated to win in 2004, he provides loads of evidence--purge lists, emails, cage lists etc. If you like you can do the math yourself: First note the US Census Burea's Official number of actual voters in 2004 (125,736,000), then subtract the House Clerk's official vote tally from 2004 (122,349,480) and what do you get--3,386,520! That's right, over THREE MILLION THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND votes disappeared--"poof." I bet you'll never hear those numbers investigated on NPR. And if you think these magical disappearing votes affect Republicans and Democrats equally guess again--the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University has statistics that show otherwise.

So what NPR and Liasson should have emphasized was not that the GOP has a great get-out-the-vote strategy, but that they have an even better Throw-Out-the-Vote strategy--one that worked extremely well in 2000, 2004, and will probably prevail again in a) 2006, b) 2008, c) 2010, or d) all of the above.