Rebecca takes a look at the Bully Boy marketing strategy.
from the prophethic pens and pencils of isaiah, his most recent the world today just nuts entitled 'the house on boo corner.' when the polls drop what does bully boy do? start talking 'osama' start talking '9-11' ... it's old, it's tired but he still does it. poor winnie, piglet and eeyore.
prophetic? this went up yesterday but was supposed to go up last sunday. that's when blogger/blogspot decided to 'white list' the common ills. sound like the days of joe mccarthy? yep, to me too. so while c.i. had to fight the 'white list' there was no way for posts to be e-mailed to the site. to put up new art work, the program 'hello' is used by all of us. 'hello' just sends it to your site. (after it's at a site, like 'the house on boo corner' is, you can carry it to another site without having to e-mail).
if you missed it the administration and the bully boy have been rumbling (like a distended stomach) about catching osama. now for 5 years, he's been the last thing on their mind. but bully boy's polls have dropped, yet again, and it's the only trick they have to play.
i didn't blog last night, you're not missing a post. fly boy surprised me yesterday afternoon with tickets to a play so we went to see that and had a very long night.
sherry e-mailed wondering why i don't link (in posts) to robert parry? i usually forget, to be honest. i see them up at the common ills, usually when i'm having my morning coffeee and watching democracy now, and then, when evening rolls around, i'm thinking about something else.
i do read him, he's 1 of my favorites. he may be number 1 on my list of favorites.
but i'm usually rushing to get the things done. but here's a piece of his latest called 'Bush Flummoxes Kafka, Orwell:'
Bush, of course, insists that the United States does not torture despite extensive evidence that detainees in the Iraq War and the War on Terror have been subjected to simulated drowning by "water-boarding," beatings to death, suffocations, coffin-like confinements, painful stress positions, naked exposure to heat and cold, anal rape, sleep deprivation, dog bites, and psychological ploys involving sexual and religious humiliation.
But Bush says none of this amounts to torture, even as his protection of abusive practices now ventures beyond word games into mind-bending legal rationalizations.
Bush's lawyers went into federal court in Washington on March 2 and argued that a new law that specifically prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees -- known as the McCain Amendment after its sponsor, Sen. John McCain -- can't be enforced at Guantanamo Bay because another clause of the law grants these prisoners only limited access to U.S. courts.
In other words, the Bush administration is contending that the McCain Amendment might make it illegal to abuse the Guantanamo prisoners, but that the inmates have no legal recourse to enforce the law by going to court and getting an order for the abuses to end.
the torture issue is something that elaine and c.i. have hit hard on repeatedly. i'm not sure that i have much to say on it that they haven't already covered. i think our reaction ties into isaiah's cartoon above, where we let some idiot so scare us that we stop caring about what we're supposed to stand for or what humanity is supposed to mean. it helps that they are 'detainees' (prisoners as elaine and c.i. have pointed out). we don't see them, we don't know about them so we, as a country, don't care too much. and when a 'soft,' little word like 'detainees' is used over and over, it doesn't seem all that important. if they were called prisoners, we might care more. but by calling them 'detainees' ... well they're just detained, right. 'detainees' sounds short term.
this administration has broken more laws and moral codes than any of us could count. but give them credit for knowing how to market their schemes and scams. as some 1 who worked in public relations, and worked successfully in my field, i'm amazed that so many people latch on to their jargon. they keep an eye on marketing. they don't care what they do as long as they can sell it to the american people.
thinking people need to stop using the administration's terms. that's how they set the agenda and control it. your average american, scared to death by the bully boy's fear mongering or not, is not going to be comfortable with prisoners being held without trial for years and years. but call them 'detainees' and you're deflating the balloon. 'detainee' implies temporary. as c.i. noted once, it makes it sound like you've been stopped while going through customs because you forgot to declare something.
in marketing, you sell the product by making it appealing. some of you may be too young to remember the early days of tampon commercials (they haven't changed that much). it was thought that talking about periods was just 'too much' for the average american to handle. so what to do? set up a commercial with clouds and horses and smiling faces and then mention the product a few times. you're selling a lifestyle because you can't sell the product.
so the woman at home is thinking 'if i use kotex, i'll be just as happy as that woman! my period usually hurts like hell! but look, she uses kotex and she's riding a horse!'
they can't sell prisoners. so the administration uses another word (like 'feminine napkin') that sounds softer. and when asked about these prisoners, they always go to 9-11. they can't sell prisoners to americans, but they can sell the 'lifestyle' factor. they can use a mild word ('detainees') and put it in their context (world trade center, pentagon, et al) so that the 'audience' is thinking 'oh my god!' and the discussion is derailed.
the fact of the matter is that if any 1 at guantanamo was involved in 9-11, there would have been a very public show trial a long time ago. they're not involved. they are prisoners of war. afghanistan did not declare war on us. they were 'guilty' of the fact that osama was in their country. when we asked them to turn him over to us, they responded (as we would), show us the proof and we will.
we wouldn't. we said 'turn him over now, proof comes later.' if another country did that to the u.s., there would be a huge outcry. so we go to war with afghanistan and, like in any war, the people fight, on both sides. we, the 'victors,' imprison the captured and bought (you can make a healthy living rounding up people and selling them to unquestioning american forces if you tell them that the people are 'taliban' or 'al quaeda').
so what we have is prisoners, and they're prisoners of war. that's the reality. and every time john mccain wants to play his 'i was a prisoner of war' card, no 1 ever asks him, 'well, as a prisoner of war, how do feel about the prisoners in guantanamo?'
that's where we are. we hold prisoners of war for years and years. we torture them and we never get honest about it. we use soft sounding terms to disguise reality.
here's some more reality from democracy now:
Study: Antartic Ice Sheet Shrinking Significantly
In environmental news, the Washington Post is reporting scientists have found the Antartic ice sheet is shrinking by as much as 36 cubic miles a year. Researchers say the results, published in the journal Science, provide the first evidence that the sheet's total mass is shrinking significantly. Scientists said the decrease is likely linked to global warming.
we've done that too. and what does bully boy call it 'climate' something. we're all aware of the term 'global warming.' but he comes into office and the order is use the milder term. so most reporters and news orgs. follow his edict as though they're working for him.
if we don't the shrinking of the artic ice seriously, no 1 will be working for any 1.
bully boy can plan all the trips to mars he wants, but if the earth becomes unable to support life systems, we've got nowhere to go. we've really trashed our home. if al gore was in the white house, we might be trying to address the issue of global warming. but bully boy is the oil man who could never find oil. he kept drilling and drilling and coming up dry (there's a sexual metaphor there, for any 1 who wants to explore). so now he's the 'big boy' who brags about how his old friends have to call him 'mr. president.' all part of proving his manhood - like strutting around on a carrier with a stuffed crotch or cozying up to big oil, where he never made it, and letting them trash our only environment.
well, hopefully it did enough for him that laura got a little action. the rest of us got screwed as well but not in the good way.
for humor and commentary check out c.i.'s 'other items' and 'NYT: The paper sends Linda Lavin to report on the Katrina tapes.' who knew they were hiring linda lavin at the paper of record? i hope they'll hire bonnie franklin next because she was always my favorite of the women on cbs' sunday nights.
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