Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Open Thread: An Anniversary Gift

Open Thread: An Anniversary Gift

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Via Mr. Pierce, from the DFHs at Foreign Policy:

Sixty years ago this Monday, on August 19, 1953, modern Iranian history took a critical turn when a U.S.- and British-backed coup overthrew the country’s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The event’s reverberations have haunted its orchestrators over the years, contributing to the anti-Americanism that accompanied the Shah’s ouster in early 1979, and even influencing the Iranians who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran later that year.

But it has taken almost six decades for the U.S. intelligence community to acknowledge openly that it was behind the controversial overthrow. Published here today — and on the website of the National Security Archive, which obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act — is a brief excerpt from The Battle for Iran, an internal report prepared in the mid-1970s by an in-house CIA historian…

TPAJAX was the CIA’s codename for the overthrow plot, which relied on local collaborators at every stage. It consisted of several steps: using propaganda to undermine Mossadegh politically, inducing the Shah to cooperate, bribing members of parliament, organizing the security forces, and ginning up public demonstrations. The initial attempt actually failed, but after a mad scramble the coup forces pulled themselves together and came through on their second try, on August 19….

Isn’t it a wonderful thing that “we” are so good at learning from “our” mistakes?

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    Belafon

    I believe what we learn is that we didn’t use enough force. Always. President Jeb Bush will re-invade Iraq with twice as many troops in the hope that it’ll be done right next time.

  4. 4.

    Cacti

    But Eisenhower warned about the military industrial complex. Surely that makes up for him overthrowing an elected government.

  5. 5.

    NickT

    @Cacti:

    You’ve spoiled tomorrow’s platinum bonus surprise posting when the connection will be made that Obama is an Eisenhower Republican, so he is really to blame for the events of 60 years ago – and only an Obot would deny it.

  7. 7.

    Tone In DC

    In college, way back when R. Raygun was in office, I turned in a paper on this. I did some research in the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress (don’t spend any part of Thanksgiving break in the library, even one as great as LC).

    It was like a 1960s pulp novel, reading that stuff at first. Then, as time went on, it rang all too true.

    W. Mark Felt had it right: Follow the money. In this case, it was Royal Dutch Shell and BP’s money.

  10. 10.

    NickT

    @Betty Cracker:

    Well, pardon me for pointing out that you didn’t understand how the legal system works and that Anne Laurie is supremely predictable in her clumsily contrived antitheses. I’ll just go and tell reality to commit suicide so you can feel better about yourselves. Happy now?

  12. 12.

    Chris

    @Belafon:

    I believe what we learn is that we didn’t use enough force.

    Ironically, I think Ike saw himself as learning the opposite lesson from the Korean War, and was hoping that CIA coups could be a less visible, less costly, and (at least in American terms) less bloody way to fight communism than to do it war by war. Didn’t really turn out that way in the long run, of course… and his Republican successors were unable to process the idea in any case.

    @Cacti:

    I hate that speech precisely for that reason. Eight years of being part of the problem, and then at the very end, “hey, I really think someone should do something about this, and, uh, it’s all on you now! LOLOL bye now.”

  13. 13.

    dollared

    @NickT: that’s special. When you’re done exercising your monopoly on reality, can I borrow it for half an hour?

  14. 14.

    piratedan

    I dunno, maybe corporate complicit would be a better description, if you take into account the work that was done on behalf of United Fruit and the Roosevelt Corollary…. we’ve got a long history of intervention if we decide it suits our national interests…

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    @Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Well, thank FSM for that. It ain’t easy being Ma Barker of An0nym0us, you know.

    @NickT: While it’s true that you’ve rooont everything by mansplaining the entire legal system to me and revealing AL’s sustained plot to subvert the prevailing narrative, I beg you to reconsider urging Objective Reality, with which you alone have such influence, to take such a drastic step. Think of the children.

  16. 16.

    NickT

    @dollared:

    Sorry, but the library says I’ve got reality for the next two weeks. If you play nice, I’ll let you look at the cover sometime.

  17. 17.

    NickT

    @Betty Cracker:

    So you’ve resorted to calling a sober statement of legal reality “mansplaining”? Fine, I’ll throw the meaningless term womansplaining back at you and you can tell yourself you got a draw out of this pointless exercise.

  18. 18.

    ? Martin

    Isn’t it a wonderful thing that “we” are so good at learning from “our” mistakes?

    Considering that when it happened, there was neither a FOIA nor an internet, there was little to no capacity for anyone to learn from such mistakes. Now there is. I would argue that we are learning, slow as it may be.

  19. 19.

    Cacti

    @NickT:

    So you’ve resorted to calling a sober statement of legal reality “mansplaining”? Fine, I’ll throw the meaningless term womansplaining back at you and you can tell yourself you got a draw out of this pointless exercise.

    That term was thrown at Lawrence O’Donnell when he wasn’t buying Julia Ioffe’s fantasy narrative about Vladimir Putin not being in complete control of Edward Snowden’s fate the moment he arrived in Moscow.

    It’s a handy term for shutting down debate.

  20. 20.

    Lavocat

    Wonderful. All this means is that the CIA and the truth only publicly come into contact 60 years after the fact.

    In 60 years, our grandchildren can learn when the CIA usurped our democracy and turned us into a police state.

    Oh, the laughs they will have!

  21. 21.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    @NickT: I don’t know how in the hell she got ‘mansplaining’ out of a man explaining how things really work to the two active female frontpagers but wimmenz never was too rational, right?

  22. 22.

    Chris

    TPAJAX was the CIA’s codename for the overthrow plot, which relied on local collaborators at every stage. It consisted of several steps: using propaganda to undermine Mossadegh politically, inducing the Shah to cooperate, bribing members of parliament, organizing the security forces, and ginning up public demonstrations. The initial attempt actually failed, but after a mad scramble the coup forces pulled themselves together and came through on their second try, on August 19….

    Interestingly, I’ve read two different versions of this story. One is that the entire thing was concocted from start to finish by the CIA and SIS, that there was little to no native support for the Shah against Mossadegh and that the Westerners had to bribe everybody involved in order to brew up the coup. The other, if I recall, is that that was just self-aggrandizing bullshit by Kermit Roosevelt and the other CIA/SIS people involved to make themselves seem more, and that it was actually the native elements of the plot (generals and the like) that pulled it off after Roosevelt & co had screwed it up (“the initial attempt.”)

  23. 23.

    NickT

    @Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:

    Fine, you explain to us just how laws are only ever allowed to be used for the specific purpose under which they were labelled for convenience. Tell us all how the Patriot Act only applies to Bill Belichick, why don’t you?And, while you are on the subject, remind us how the Feds got Capone under the Al Capone Anti-Mafia Law. Strut your stuff, show us what that dazzling mind of yours can offer.

    There are such things as facts. Front-pagers fuck up. So it goes, despite your attempts to pretend otherwise.

  25. 25.

    Cacti

    @NickT:

    Fine, you explain to us just how laws are only ever allowed to be used for the specific purpose under which they were labelled for convenience. Tell us all how the Patriot Act only applies to Bill Belichick, why don’t you?And, while you are on the subject, remind us how the Feds got Capone under the Al Capone Anti-Mafia Law. Strut your stuff, show us what that dazzling mind of yours can offer.

    Next time I get pulled over for speeding, I’m going to protest that my name wasn’t on the signs.

  26. 26.

    drkrick

    At least the operation codenames have gotten catchier – TPAJAX? I guess they didn’t expect them to wind up on the front page in those days.

  28. 28.

    NickT

    @Cacti:

    Well, it might just be worth a try. You might find you’ve got some fuckhead of a cop who scratches his ass, squares his shoulders and saves the Republic by letting you go.

  30. 30.

    EconWatcher

    Yes, the CIA got rid of elected leaders in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973…. and maybe, just maybe, is all I’m saying… the U.S. in November 1963.

  31. 31.

    Thlayli

    @Cacti:

    Surely that makes up for him overthrowing an elected government

    “An”? Ike had more than one elected government on his trophy wall.

  36. 36.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @NickT: Should I also follow them from thread to thread and insilt and abuse them for having a wrongheaded opinion?

  38. 38.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Serious question, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you on drugs or is it hormonal?

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Mossadegh’s sin was, of course, his absurd notion that the oil under the ground of Iran should be used primarily to benefit the people of Iran, not British or American oil companies.

    There is no greater sin than this, as far as guys like Dick Cheney are concerned.

  41. 41.

    dollared

    @NickT:
    Let’s face it – what you Really Smart Mansplainers are all about is you care more about “understanding how the world works” than you care about making a better world. Which is to say, your education was fucking wasted, because you can’t contribute anything useful.

    Yes, the law can be used the way you described. Do you understand that that doesn’t make the use of the law that way A Good Thing? The sedition and espionage laws from WWI are still around. The sodomy laws are still on the books in Virginia. But we’re pretty clear that they shouldn’t be used.

    If John Roberts and Antonin Scalia were as limited in their ambition and intelligence as you are, the Second Amendment would still have a meaning that includes the concept of a “well-regulated militia.” Instead, they figured out what they wanted the world to be and they made it so.

    So our hippie chick front pagers are pointing out the way things should be, not the way they are. Thank you for standing up bravely and defending the status quo. What would we do without you?

  43. 43.

    NickT

    @dollared:

    Perhaps you should direct your rant to someone who might take you seriously. If you can’t handle the idea that laws are often applied outside the remit suggested by their official titles, you need to spend some time coming to terms with reality. You might also work on your critical thinking skills and learn how to argue against what your opponent has actually said, as opposed the fantasy version that’s got you so hot and bothered.

  47. 47.

    Suffern ACE

    At the same time, had we not foisted our oil companies into Iran, our involvement there would have made very little sense. But we really ought to kind if thank the British for sending us the invitation.

  50. 50.

    dollared

    @NickT:

    This is ridiculously silly – and ignorant of how legal realities actually work. Statutes are given names partly to distinguish them from the mass of material passed through parliament, partly as a fairly loose guideline to the content of said statute. The name implies no limitation on the powers conveyed to the police and courts by said statute. In other words, it is perfectly normal for a non-terrorist to be detained under “anti-terrorist” legislation, just as, for example, it was normal (and necessary) back in the day for cyber-criminals to be detained under older legislation that had been written before the internet existed. That’s simply the reality of how the legal system works – and always has. You won’t ever have a legal system that covers every eventuality with its own nicely labeled law – and so existing laws are extended to cover new situations. Nor is it unusual for a suspect to be detained for a period of some hours. As for the “routine harassment” claim, that is an allegation made by Poitras, rather than an established fact.

    Here’s a guy who claims to be a lawyer who’s never heard of prosecutorial discretion, and who is unaware of the political consequences of using unpopular or inappropriate legal tools to accomplish a task. Wow.

    And a guy who claims to be smarter than the front pagers here when his idea of “analysis” is to call someone a PUMA for criticizing the President.

    Please, carry on. You’re providing plenty of entertainment.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    @NickT: Works for me! But I’ll explain why I used that term (not that I expect you’ll give a shit): In the thread in question, you immediately took a “see here, you just don’t get it, that’s just plain silly” tone. I didn’t respond in kind in that thread and tried to explain where I was coming from. And to be fair, I could have been clearer about my objections to this application of the law to begin with, etc.

    But I thought your resurrecting that here and sniping at AL in that way were, well, kind of dickish. Nothing wrong with that; dickishness is a cherished BJ tradition, and it was no doubt dickish of ME to respond in the way I did.

    But your constant assumption of bad faith and/or stupidity on the part of your opponents seems almost…firebaggy. Sorry. That was a dickish thing to say. Again! Carry on!

  53. 53.

    Citizen_X

    @Bobby Thomson: And–not a “democratically elected” government, but neither was the one it replaced–they tried to get another scalp at Bay of Pigs, but that one goes into the loss column.

  55. 55.

    Cacti

    @NickT:

    Perhaps you should direct your rant to someone who might take you seriously. If you can’t handle the idea that laws are often applied outside the remit suggested by their official titles, you need to spend some time coming to terms with reality. You might also work on your critical thinking skills and learn how to argue against what your opponent has actually said, as opposed the fantasy version that’s got you so hot and bothered.

    You mean old mainsplaining man. Can’t you just accept that it was colossally insensitive of Obama to deny Hillary her patrician right to the White House.

    Can’t you also accept that if Glenn Greenwald’s boo isn’t free to traffic stolen information through Heathrow, Obama is a tyrant?

  56. 56.

    gratuitous

    I wonder if the learning curve on our mistakes couldn’t be shortened just a smidge if we didn’t spend 60 years denying we’d made a mistake? But then, crapulous sentiments such as “they hate us for our freedom” would sound . . . crapulous. And ain’t nobody got time for that!

  59. 59.

    Citizen_X

    @gratuitous:

    I wonder if the learning curve on our mistakes couldn’t be shortened just a smidge if we didn’t spend 60 years denying we’d made a mistake making sure every little bureaucratic fart kept its “Top Secret” designation?

    That, too.

  60. 60.

    Cacti

    @burnspbesq:

    Of course she is. He went back to 1953 in the NSA’s time machine and gave the order. I’m sure I read that in Howard Zinn’s book.

    If not Zinn, I’m sure Noam Chomsky has an article about it.

  62. 62.

    lamh36

    So wait, Ed Shultz is being rescued from the weekend dungeon at MSNBC?

    I’m reading that Shultz will be getting the 2nd Hardball slot?

  66. 66.

    Steve Crickmore

    Will it take 60 years, too? Guantánamo Bay: the US was dead wrong, but no one can admit it The price of freedom is this endless pusuit on ‘the war on terror’ which ends not so much in tragedy but farce.

    About two months ago, I learned that some of my books had been banned at Guantánamo Bay. Apparently detainees were requesting them, and their lawyers were delivering them to the prison, but they were not being allowed in because of “impermissible content”.

    The Pentagon bans US soldiers from reading the Guardian and now America’s best selling novelist, John Grisham is banned in Gunatanomo because of “impermissable content “. What is next?

  67. 67.

    burnspbesq

    @John Cole:

    Was I ever radically chic?

    You’ve never been chic. The closest you came was in your laxbrah days, and you were 20 years too soon.

  69. 69.

    Cacti

    @lamh36:

    So wait, Ed Shultz is being rescued from the weekend dungeon at MSNBC?

    I guess it took them this long to figure out that Chris Hayes can’t anchor a prime time line up.

    I just can’t understand why. He’s so riveting.

  73. 73.

    eemom

    @Cacti:

    He’s so riveting.

    See, this is what I mean.

    Most of the time I agree with you — but now you’ve gone and insulted my lil cutie Mrs. Robinson crush.

    Why’d you wanna go and do that?

  75. 75.

    dollared

    @burnspbesq: I missed the part where you and NickT were using your superior knowledge of the law to fight tirelessly to make the world a better place.

  79. 79.

    John Cole

    @eemom:

    The blog is coming unglued. Even for it.

    btw, where’s DougJ these days?

    This blog, like the entire political world, apparently comes unglued every summer during the recess. I think it is the heat.

    Last I heard DougJ was over in Europe, the cheese-eating surrender monkey.

  80. 80.

    taylormattd

    @Betty Cracker:

    sniping at AL in that way were, well, kind of dickish.

    If you’d like to see “dickish”, you might want to re-read any of AL’s non-gardening posts.

  81. 81.

    Suffern ACE

    If you rearrange the Mohammed Mossadegh you get the words ‘shamed modems’ plus other letters predicting Romney’s defeat due to network problems with Orca, and the rise of Obama. So yeah, there may be an Obama connection you’re not seeing.

  85. 85.

    burnspbesq

    @dollared:

    I missed the part where you and NickT were using your superior knowledge of the law to fight tirelessly to make the world a better place.

    Since you have no earthly idea what I do when I’m not hanging around this cesspool, that one gets filed under making shit up.

  86. 86.

    burnspbesq

    @dollared:

    Yeah, Zinn, Chomsky. Bad people. Pinkos. Gotta ignore them. Un-American.

    Never said they were bad. I don’t consider people who are wrong but acting in good faith to be bad.

    You, on the other hand, are as bad as they come.

  87. 87.

    dollared

    @Rex Everything: Thanks for the trip to Teh Google. That guy is a walking example of How to Pay The Mortgage Fluffing the Center Right Hypothesis. We should make a board game of his career. If you win, Satan comes to collect.

  89. 89.

    Roger Moore

    @taylormattd:

    If you’d like to see “dickish”, you might want to re-read any of AL’s non-gardening posts.

    Do any of them consist of anything but long quotes from somebody else and a brief question about what we’re all doing?

  90. 90.

    dollared

    @burnspbesq: Yup, nothing worse than someone who challenges you to help make the world a better place. That’s evil, swinish, beneath contempt.

  92. 92.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @burnspbesq: Burns, we’ve all been to your site page. Whatever you are working on, stop. Then spend more time on your personal appearance.

  94. 94.

    Suffern ACE

    @dollared: what does Chomsky’s better world look like? He’s had 50 years to work that out. But reading the umteetth version of how there’s a crisis in capitalism (the theme if the left since 1970s), democracy isn’t working like they told you in school, and elites have power that excludes you and me from important decisions this weekend in Salon made me wonder what he has in mind.

  95. 95.

    dollared

    @Rex Everything: Really. I’ll have to pay more attention. From Wikipedia’s article on him, he pretty much looks like the perfect Tory tool. So how does a BJ’er think he adds value? Weird. Too bad searching the site doesn’t work on Internet Explorer….

  97. 97.

    JPL

    @lamh36: So what’s he gonna do when his approval ratings fall into the thirties… (couldn’t resist) That is the cutest dog ever and I’m so pleased that they named her after my former Golden Sunny. My Sunny was a male but whatever.

  98. 98.

    fuckwit

    OK I figured out what is bothering me about this whole nonsense.

    It’s people who are howling about executive overreach, demanding that the executive overreach in order to fix it. It’s a non-starter, it’s self-inconsistent, and it’s ridiculous.

    Congress makes laws. The judiciary determines the Constitutionality of laws. The Executive executes the laws. If you believe the Executive is overreaching its authority, the only ways to solve that are have Congress make laws to remove that authority (like, repeal the AUMF maybe for starters? repeal the drug-war search-and-seizure laws?) or challenge the action in the Supreme Court and have them slap down the Executive. Those are your two options folks (I’d support both, if anyone was up for actually doing them).

    Let me explain this slowly. If you believe we have an autocratic, tyrannical executive branch that is overreaching its Constitutional powers, why are you calling for it to use those supposed autocratic powers to eliminate its own supposed autocratic powers? How the hell is that supposed to work?

    Moreover, I’m really getting annoyed at the argument that “if it was an R you’d be outraged”. Besides that being a contrafactual, there’s nothing this executive can do to rein in powers of the next one: anything he changes can be changed back again, so it’d be a waste of time.

    Another irritating agument is “well he’s not following these ones!”. Well, what are your options? Again, the Courts, or more laws, possibly Congressional investigations with subpoena power (you know, like the ones Bush and Cheney got out of submitting to… this problem is not new).

    What bothers me about this outrage directed at the President is the profound ignorance of the Constitution that it exposes. We don’t have an elected dictatorship. We have a republic, with 3 supposedly equal branches of government, and checks and balances. This is the #1 perfect classic case for using those checks and balances: an excess of power by one of the branches. Solve it by agitating for the other branches to take action.

  100. 100.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @eemom: No, it wasn’t a passive aggressive swipe. I think DougJ is, by and large, a shitty front pager, despite the fact I usually agree with him. On the other hand, AL is a pretty good front pager and regularly sends me to stuff I wouldn’t regularly run into on my Internet travels. But you Kewl Kidz dislike her because she isn’t reliably on your team. And you know what I think about that. The whole lot of you can go fuck yourselves. :)

  101. 101.

    dollared

    @Suffern ACE: good question. But I do believe in division of labor. Chomsky can point out all the problems inherent in running our corrupt empire without having to articulate his own vision for how the world should be organized, as long as he’s adding to our store of knowledge by illuminating our blind spots. And I think he does that with an accuracy rate well above 50%, so he adds value.

  102. 102.

    Rex Everything

    @dollared: Enhh, there’s always some guy saying the exact thing a certain sizable audience wants to hear. For 90s conservatards it was “that piquant John Leo”; for these clowns it’s Ben Wittes. How they stay awake reading him is beyond me. Maybe they don’t. His work does function as a kind of lullabye.

  103. 103.

    PIGL

    @NickT: I don’t know if he feels bad about his behaviour, but yours is really starting to get up my nose.

    Nobody likes a smartalec.

  105. 105.

    mainmati

    @piratedan: Yes, there’s no question that the Federal Government has been openly and transparently serving mercantile and then multinational corporate interests since the 19th century. Our occupation of Haiti was explicitly to enforce the interests of the French ex-colonists and their suits against the Haitian government ensuring poverty for the next 150 years. Our foreign policy has mostly been a defense of capitalism no matter how damaging to the country.

  106. 106.

    PopeRatzo

    @fuckwit:

    Let me explain this slowly.

    And there it is. The mansplain in full.

    If you believe the Executive is overreaching its authority, the only ways to solve that are have Congress make laws to remove that authority (like, repeal the AUMF maybe for starters? repeal the drug-war search-and-seizure laws?) or challenge the action in the Supreme Court and have them slap down the Executive. Those are your two options folks (I’d support both, if anyone was up for actually doing them).

    So, since both the EFF and the ACLU (to name two) are “up for actually doing them”, I’ll just go ahead and assume you’ve sent them both a nice donation to use in what’s going to be a long, difficult fight, because President Obama seems to be “executing” these surveillance laws with a great deal of relish, and is willing to lie his ass off to protect that power. Of course, the fact that the laws are being made and executed using a secret fucking court is going to make it a little bit trickier to challenge those laws before the Supreme Court. And the fact that the secret fucking court is staffed entirely with judges hand-picked by Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t help. But nobody said rolling back a police state was going to be easy. It’s good to know that you’re on board for the fight.

    I’m glad we cleared the air about all that, fuckwit.

  109. 109.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Rex Everything: I’m fairly sure there was all of one person on that whole thread had anything positive to say about Ben Wittes: burnspbesq. I have no idea who Ben Wittes is. Who are these authoritarian clowns around here who see him as a favorite?

  112. 112.

    mapaghimagsik

    It looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays.

    Well, actually it looks like someone’s got a case of the, “fuck you, and back off before I fire my razor-encrusted flaming, rabid howler monkey canon at you, you fuckity fucking fuck!”

    And it’s Monday.

  113. 113.

    Steve Crickmore

    Surely, one of the checks or restraints pushing against the presidental culture of trying to extend its excecutive power first by Bush and then Obama is the freedom and responsibilty of the press, that it shouldn’t allow executive abuses to go unnoticed, and yet when hypocrisies are pointed out, the weight of much Balloon Juice comes down on the side of the powerful and ruthless.

    And as far as ego and vanity goes, unlike the two books by Greenwald on issues, we also have two books by Obama both autobiographical works, and not one scholarly article (maybe because what was important to him were not his ideas on issues, which are quite mutable, but his career in politics). Yet, all I hear is that Greenwald is the vain egoist.

  114. 114.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steve Crickmore:

    And as far as ego and vanity goes, unlike the two books by Greenwald on issues, we also have two books by Obama both autobiographical works, and not one scholarly article (maybe because what was important to him were not his ideas on issues, which are quite mutable, but his career in politics).

    The sad part is, you couldn’t even be bothered to do a three-second search of Amazon to see that you were wrong, you just spouted off what you’d heard from others. You didn’t even get the number of Obama’s published books right.

    I’m embarrassed for you.

  115. 115.

    Steve Crickmore

    I forgot yes, Obama ‘wrote’ a childrens’ book too, after he was elected in 2008, but he is principally noted for his two earlier books and not having written anything scholarly that could leave a footprint, which says something about America and Obama. Greenwald has actually now written four books, my bad.

  116. 116.

    Donald

    @Cacti:
    I don’t watch MSNBC very much–it’s cutesy and stupid most of the time. But Hayes ran a genuinely intelligent two hour show on the weekends. Then they “promoted” him to the clown lineup and gave his old show to Steve Kornacki, who provides absolutely no reason for anyone to be awake at 8 AM on a Saturday or Sunday morning.

  118. 118.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steve Crickmore:

    Again, your search “skills” fail you, and I continue to be embarrassed for you.

    Get back to me when you figure out how The Google works.

    ETA: Here, I’ll even give you a blurb to Google:

    In these pages you will find bold and specific ideas about how to fix our ailing economy and strengthen the middle class, make health care affordable for all, achieve energy independence, and keep America safe in a dangerous world.

    Found it yet?

  119. 119.

    Steve Crickmore

    The fact is Obama admitted he misappropriated dates and sequences in his autobigraphy to make it a better narrative,* but less accurate. My working assumption is he has continued in that vein, when the stakes have been much higher. That is why we need a diligent press. Obama has been steadily drifting to the center as the tea party and crazies have moved the political spectrum to the right. Frankly, I’m pleased that a few conspicuous people like Greenwald are so unrelenting and uncompromising, on the left on these issues, otherwise Obama would be convinced he only needs to fear from the right wing wackos that he is soft on terrorism.

  121. 121.

    billB

    Yes, sadly Hopey Obamster has turned into a Repub like clinton did. Two very intelligent men selling their souls to the devil. But hey stick to your guns and they do a JFK on you. Them boys at Central-intell don’t fool around. The only man who can stand tall in our lives is Jimmeah Carter.

  122. 122.

    gratuitous

    @piratedan: Well . . . two things: We’re talking about the U.S. in this thread, not Russia.* And second, Russia doesn’t deny that the Stalin regime existed (in the name of national security, of course).

    *Make it three (sort of, in the nit-pickiest of ways): Present-day Russia is not the late and unlamented Soviet Union

  123. 123.

    Mnemosyne

    @gratuitous:

    Also, too, Khrushchev took care of the whole “apologizing for Stalin and revealing his crimes” thing, which is why he ended up being forcibly retired. Putin would need to apologize for post-Khrushchev era, assuming that Gorbachev didn’t already take care of it.

    (Actually, the Russians tend to be pretty good at years-after-the-fact apologies — Yeltsin took care of the apology for the Bolsheviks murdering the Romanovs back in 1998.)

  124. 124.

    Steve Crickmore

    Actually it will be curious to see what Obama does when he retires, from the presidency? Jimmy Carter works at the Carter Center in Atlanta to advance human rights and alleviate suffering and has a Habitat for Humanity, to build affordable housing. Bill Clinton travels around the world raising and dispensing money with the equally praise worthy Clinton Global Initiative. The Bushes 41 and 43, pass time and are involved with their librairies and mainly giving speeches. I see Obama following more in the footsteps of the Republican ex-presidents. His one big accomplishment ,a step towards universal heath care, seems so far behind all other first world and many second and third world countries, it is difficult to see him influencing or advising much of the world on this matter. I suppose conflict resolution, or ‘leading from behind’ might be another questionable legacy, maybe with a book titled Decisions; how I delayed or avoided so many?

  125. 125.

    taylormattd

    @Roger Moore: Yes, there is an [optional paragraph] that goes just before the “What’s on the agenda today?” It consists of a passive aggressive insult to people who don’t loathe Obama with the white hot fire of 1000 suns.

  126. 126.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Steve Crickmore: Glenn Greenwald is known for his meticulous accuracy and not his willingness to create pleasing narratives. Also for his brevity and his long, flowing locks. Oh, you mean we’re not doing the “Opposite Day” bit? My bad.

  127. 127.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steve Crickmore: I’m sure President Obama will write at least one volume of WH memoirs, which I am really looking forward to reading. He’s a very intelligent man and an award-winning author, so his descripiton of what he’s done in the Oval Office should be most interesting.

  130. 130.

    Suffern ACE

    @taylormattd: so passive that it exists even in posts when it’s not there. Her aggression is so intense then that the entire space between the lines is full of contempt and no one is allowed to get a word in edgewise.

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