Government Propaganda? Not Here, Surely -- Must Be Chinese!

William Blum:

The Washington Post recently ran a story about how the Chinese people largely support the government suppression of the Tibetan protesters. The heading was: "Beijing's Crackdown Gets Strong Domestic Support. Ethnic Pride Stoked by Government Propaganda."

He's not kidding: here's the link.

Blum writes:

The article spoke of how Beijing officials have "educated" the public about Tibet "through propaganda".

Indeed. Here's Edward Cody in the Washington Post:

In the West, the name Tibet has long evoked unspoiled Himalayan landscapes, cinnamon-robed monks spinning prayer wheels and a peace-loving Dalai Lama seeking freedom for his repressed Buddhist followers.

Here in China, people have embraced a different view; they regard Tibet as a historical part of the nation and see its sympathizers in the West as easily fooled romantics. Thanks to government propaganda, but also to ethnic pride, most Chinese see the Dalai Lama and his monks as obscurantist reactionaries trying to split the country and reverse the economic and social progress that China has brought to a backward and isolated land over the past 58 years.

The violent protests by Buddhist monks and other Tibetans that exploded in Lhasa on Friday, therefore, have generated widespread condemnation among the country's majority Han Chinese. In street conversations, Internet discussions and academic forums, most Chinese have readily embraced the government's contention that the violence resulted from a plot mounted by the Dalai Lama from his exile headquarters in India.

Blum again:

Imagine the Post or any other American mainstream media saying that those Americans who support the war in Iraq do so because they've been educated by government propaganda. ... Ditto those who support the war in Afghanistan. ... Ditto those who supported the bombing of Yugoslavia. ... Ditto scores of other US invasions, bombings, overthrows, and miscellaneous war crimes spanning more than half a century.

Can you imagine? Internet discussions where people speak out in favor of war crimes? Street conversations? Academic forums?

Cody says the people are even urging the government to be more vicious:

Against that background, the Communist Party has met with broad popular approval in vowing to crack down on the rioters -- most of whose victims were Han Chinese -- and in qualifying the "impudent" Dalai Lama as a "master terror maker" who has hoodwinked the West with his appeals for peace. While the rest of the world invokes the Beijing Olympics and advises restraint, Chinese specialists and the public have urged the government to move decisively...

And it all seems so familiar ... Are we sure we don't have any propaganda here?

Blum again:

A recurring theme of Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency has been that she has more of the right kind of experience needed to deal with national security and foreign policy issues than Barack Obama. The latest play on this is her advertisement telling you: It's three a.m. and your children are safe and asleep; but there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing; something really bad is happening somewhere; and voters are asked who they want answering the phone. Of course they should want Hillary and her marvelous experience. (If she's actually explained what that marvelous experience is, I missed it. Perhaps her near-death experience in Bosnia?)

Typical of Clinton's growing corps of conservative followers, the Washington Times recently lent support to this theme. The right-wing newspaper interviewed a group of "mostly conservative retired [military] officers, industry executives and current defense officials", who cite Mr. Obama's lack of experience in national security.

And so it goes. And so it has gone for many years. What is it with this experience thing for public office? It was not invented by Hillary Clinton. If I need to have my car repaired I look for a mechanic with experience with my particular car. If I needed an operation I'd seek out a surgeon with lots of experience performing that particular operation. But when it comes to choosing a person for political office, the sine qua non consideration is what their politics are. Who would you choose between two candidates -- one who was strongly against everything you passionately supported but who had decades of holding high government positions, or one who shared your passion on every important issue but had never held any public office? Is there any doubt about which person almost everyone would go for? So why does this "experience" thing keep coming up in so many elections?

A recent national poll questioned registered voters about the candidates' "approach to foreign policy and national security". 43% thought that Obama would be "not tough enough" (probably a reflection of the "experience" factor), while only 3% thought he'd be "too tough". For Clinton the figures were 37% and 9%. The evidence is overwhelming that decades of very tough -- nay, brutal -- US policies toward the Middle East has provoked extensive anti-American terrorism; the same in Latin America in earlier decades, yet this remains an alien concept to most American voters, who think that toughness works (even though they know it doesn't work on Americans -- witness the reaction to 9/11).

John McCain, who is proud to have dropped countless bombs on the people of Vietnam, who had never done him or his country any harm until he and his country invaded them, who now (literally) sings in public about bombing the people of Iran, and who tells us he's prepared to remain in Iraq for 100 years, is still regarded as "not tough enough" by 16% and "too tough" by only 25%. What does it take to convince Americans that one of their leaders is a bloody psychopath? Like the two psychos he may replace. How has 225 years of our grand experiment in democracy wound up like this? And why is McCain regularly referred to as a "war hero"? He was shot down and captured and held prisoner for more than five years. What's heroic about that? In most other kinds of work, such a record would be called a failure.

Winston Churchill said that "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." And if that doesn't do it for you, try a five-minute conversation with almost any American politician. This thing called democracy continues to be used as a substitute for human liberation.

One parting thought about Obama: Is he prepared to distance himself from Rev. Martin Luther King as he has from his own minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright? King vehemently denounced the Vietnam War and called the United States "the most violent nation in the world". Like Wright, he was strongly condemned for his remarks. As T.S. Eliot famously observed: "Humankind can not bear very much reality."

Blum gives his readers quite a few things to think about. Here's a sampling:

Expressing elementary truths about the oppression of the poor by the rich in the United States runs the risk of being accused of "advocating class warfare"; because the trick of class war is to not let the victims know the war is being waged.

What do the CEOs do all day that they should earn a thousand times more than schoolteachers, nurses, firefighters, street cleaners, and social workers? Re-read some medieval history, about feudal lords and serfs.

The campaigns of the anti-regulationists imply that pure food and drugs will be ours as soon as we abolish the pure food and drug laws. ...

The more you care about others, the more you're at a disadvantage competing in the capitalist system.

To say that 1% of the population owns 35% of the resources and wealth, is deceptive. If you own 35% you can control much more than that.

How could the current distribution of property and wealth have emerged from any sort of democratic process? ...

Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good. ...

Communist governments take over companies. Under capitalism, the companies take over the government. ...

How much reality can you bear?

Read the rest here.

Obama's Lies Are Better! (And The Sniper Who Fired At Hillary And Chelsea In Bosnia Was Virtual)

Reuters:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday she made a mistake when she claimed she had come under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996 while she was first lady.

In a speech in Washington and in several interviews last week Clinton described how she and her daughter, Chelsea, ran for cover under hostile fire shortly after her plane landed in Tuzla, Bosnia.

Several news outlets disputed the claim...

... and right away, too! -- not five years later (or never!), like they do when some people make "mistakes" ... and they found some video, which

... showed Clinton walking from the plane, accompanied by her daughter. They were greeted by a young girl in a small ceremony on the tarmac and there was no sign of tension or any danger.

... as expected.

"I did make a mistake in talking about it, you know, the last time and recently," Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania where she was campaigning before the state's April 22 primary. She said she had a "different memory" about the landing.

She's delusionial.

"So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I'm human, which, you know, for some people, is a revelation."

What is she implying? We used to think she was perfect? Or is she saying "I can't be a monster because monsters don't make mistakes"?

Then she tried to change the subject:

"This is really about what policy experience we have and who's ready to be commander in chief. And I'm happy to put my experience up against Senator Obama's any day."

Right. Exactly. Let's talk about experience: How many times has Senator Obama been shot at in Bosnia?

But that's not what this is really about. It's about who can tell the most convincing lies.

And Obama is winning!

Why? His lies are also contradicted by video evidence...

Watch Jeremiah Wright preaching for racial equality:

Now watch Hillary Clinton grouping (and implicitly equating) Jeremiah Wright with Don Imus -- who, as you may recall, got in trouble for doing exactly the opposite!

How's that for reality-reversal?

Now watch Jeremiah Wright preaching about America's role in the world:

Read what he said, and consider carefully how much of it is true and how much is false:

“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

What did Barack Obama say about all this?

... the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity ...

Here's the rub: Are the major TV networks and the other candidates going to tell the truth that discredits Obama? Are they going to dig up video of all the countries we have invaded and bombed and destroyed? Are they going to start talking about all the terrorism we have deliberately fomented? Are they going to talk about all the death squads we've set up? Are going to select juicy clips and play them every 15 minutes, all day and all night until we scream? Are they going to say:

Hold it! Obama lied, too!! Jeremiah Wright wasn't wrong after all! We have released a few chickens. Maybe they did come home to roost on 9/11!

Violence does beget violence! Of course it does -- how could it not? Hatred does beget hatred! And how can we deny that terrorism begets terrorism?

Are they going to say that? Are they going to say any of that? In other words: Are we serious here? Of course not.

Even independent investigative journalists wouldn't do something that.

Makes ya proud ta be a murkin, don' it?

New Study finds No Link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda

Conspiracy theorists have been saying for years that there was no link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda; that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were antagonists; that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of 9/11. It may not seem like a big deal, since after all Saddam [seen here in a sandbagged bunker] is now dead, and the attacks of 9/11 happened a long time ago. But these assertions are at odds with statements made repeatedly by the president, the vice president, many other White House officials, and other supporters of the ongoing war in Iraq.

As you may recall, two main reasons were given to "justify" the American invasion and subsequent occupation of a defenseless oil-rich country. One of them was an alleged tie between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, possibly evidenced by a purported meeting between an Iraqi intelligence official and the putative lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta.

The other reason, of course, was Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. The president, in one of his most delightful moments of levity, has admitted that this claim was only a joke.

And now the claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda, long challenged by opponents of the war, has been thoroughly debunked in a comprehensive study made by -- no! not another conspiracy theorist! -- the Institute for Defense Analyses, under contract with the Pentagon itself.

We weren't supposed to see the report. We weren't even supposed to see the press release announcing the release of the report. Well, guess what?

ABC News (of Australia) carried this story from AFP:

No link between Saddam and Al Qaeda: Pentagon

A detailed Pentagon study confirms there was no direct link between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda network, debunking a claim US President George W Bush's administration used to justify invading Iraq.

The US administration tried to bury the release of the study, limiting distribution of the report and making it available only at individual request and by mail - instead of posting it on the internet or handing it out to reporters.

Indeed. But that lame attempt failed dismally -- and here's the report, a 94-page PDF, courtesy of ABC (US) News via TPM via Gandhi!

The AFP report from Australia continues:

Coming five years after the start of the war in Iraq, the study of 600,000 official Iraqi documents and thousands of hours of interrogations of former Saddam Hussein colleagues "found no smoking gun between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qaeda," said the study, quoted in US media.

Other reports by the blue-ribbon September 11 commission and the Pentagon's inspector general in 2007 reached the same conclusion but none had access to as much information.

"The Iraqi Perspective Project review of captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism" and "state terrorism became a routine tool of state power" but "the predominant target of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens," said a summary of the Pentagon study.

Mr Bush, US Vice President Dick Cheney and top aides have insisted there were links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, citing the alleged ties as a rationale for going to war in Iraq.

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Mr Bush said in June 2004.

Can we talk about impeachment now? Can we talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity? How about some justice? How about some restitution?? How about some punishment????

Oh no! It's not possible, because we live in a democracy and we have a choice: We can have John McCain and troops in Iraq for another hundred years; or we can have Hillary Clinton and troops in Iraq forever; or we can have Barack Obama and be very very nice to everyone you meet and hope it will all work out fine in the end.

Tom Toles: The Audacity Of Hate

Former donkey vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who now supports Hillary Clinton, has everything all figured out. And she is "absolutely not" about to apologize for saying how it is.

According to the LA Times,

Ferraro, the first woman to be on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate in either party, ignited a controversy when she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance that: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman [of any color] he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

And now she's saying

"My comments have been taken so out of context and been spun by the Obama campaign as racist," she said on ABC's "This Morning America." "That, you know is doing precisely what they don't want done -- it's going to [divide] the Democratic Party and dividing us even more."

Here's some background on Ferraro, from the article in the Daily Breeze:

Born in 1935, Ferraro was a teacher, a lawyer and member of the Queens County District Attorney's office prior to being elected to the U.S. Congress in 1978, representing New York's 9th District. But it was the presidential campaign of 1984 that thrust her into the national spotlight, when Ferraro was chosen to be Walter Mondale's running mate. The campaign lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.

After two failed attempts to gain a seat in the United States Senate, Ferraro was appointed ambassador to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights during the Clinton administration. From 1996 to 1998 she appeared as co-host of the political television show "Crossfire." Currently, Ferraro is a senior managing director of the Global Consulting Group, a corporate public relations firm.

Despite suffering from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer that limits her energy, Ferraro said she is committed to keeping up an active speaking schedule and doing everything she can to help the Clinton campaign.

"I'm on Hillary's finance committee. I've done a fundraiser for her here at my firm. And I went and worked the phone banks before Super Tuesday. I have to tell you, this is a very emotional campaign for me," Ferraro said.

Very emotional indeed.

When the subject turned to Obama, Clinton's rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Ferraro's comments took on a decidedly bitter edge.

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro does not buy the notion of Obama as the great reconciler.

"I was reading an article that said young Republicans are out there campaigning for Obama because they believe he's going to be able to put an end to partisanship," Ferraro said, clearly annoyed. "Dear God! Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship - that's the way our country is."

So there's the context.

Vote for Hillary because she will divide the country.

Not that any of this matters in the least, but I thought you might be interested.

Apologize And Resign: Obama Adviser Pays Heavy Price For Telling The Truth

Samantha Power [photo] lost her cool the other day and uttered a glaringly obvious truth about Hillary Clinton, describing her as a "monster" who will do anything to win.

Astute observers have known this for a long time. But astute observers are not welcome in the Obama camp, where fantasy reigns supreme. Thus,

Mr Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, said the remarks were not in keeping with the senator's views: "Senator Obama decries such characterisations, which have no place in this campaign."

And that's the end of the line for Samantha Power.

Hillary Clinton, as you may realize, has been relentless in lowering the bar that allegedly restrains her and the sleaze-mongers running her campaign.

Thus she finds it perfectly acceptable to say, over and over, in public:

"I know I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House, I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House, and Senator Obama has a speech that he made in 2002."

That's ok, you see. Nothing wrong with that, is there? A donkey candidate endorsing an elephant over a fellow donkey? You see that all the time, don't you?

Well, you'll never see anything like that from the Obama camp. Or almost never.

Why? Obama's campaign -- just like the campaigns he's campaigning against -- is based on a lie. And that means that -- just like those other campaigns -- it must constantly be embellished with more lies. And all the candidate's horses and all the candidate's men (and women) must continue to tell those lies, come what may.

For some candidates, this is a pragmatic approach. They do it because it works. But Obama's chosen a bad lie, and now his lie has him trapped, and he can't abandon it without showing his entire campaign to have been false.

Obama started out selling warm fuzzies, and that means he and his aides have to keep on selling those warm fuzzies -- and never a cold prickly.

Hillary herself can throw cold pricklies at Obama all she likes. But if anybody who so much as volunteers for Obama says anything cold and prickly about Hillary, an apology and a resignation are in order.

As for the substance of the argument, here's James Fallows:

I have reached the point of wanting to scream every time I hear about the primacy of "experience," knowing how skillfully the 46-year old Bill Clinton waved that argument away when it was used against him 16 years ago by a sitting President who simply dwarfed him in high-level experience. But to pose it in a form that is poison for the party should Obama be the nominee??? To produce a clip that the McCain campaign could run unedited every single day of a campaign against Obama? That is something special.

It sure is. Yours to enjoy, right here, at the frozen blog.

Politics: Power and Principle, in That Order!

"I'm a politician," runs the old joke, "and I have principles."

Wait! That's not the punchline!

"If you don't like my principles," the joke continues, "that's OK. I also have other principles."

~~~

"Where do you stand on disenfranchisement?" runs my newer coda.

"Disenfranchisement of whom?" the politician inquires.

"Millions of voters?"

"Well, that all depends on who I'm workin' for!"

~~~

Hope Yen for the AP: Clinton Aide Changes Mich., Fla. Stance

Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign who voted to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates last year, now is arguing against the very penalty he helped pass.

In a conference call Saturday, the longtime Democratic Party member contended the DNC should reconsider its tough sanctions on the two states, which held early contests in violation of party rules. He said millions of voters in Michigan and Florida would be otherwise disenfranchised — before acknowledging moments later that he had favored the sanctions.

Ickes explained that his different position essentially is due to the different hats he wears as both a DNC member and a Clinton adviser in charge of delegate counting. Clinton won the primary vote in Michigan and Florida, and now she wants those votes to count.

"There's been no change," Ickes said. "I wasn't acting as an agent for Mrs. Clinton. We stripped them of all their delegates in order to prevent campaigns to campaign in those states. ...Those were the rules, and we thought we had an obligation to enforce them."

And now we have no obligation to enforce them anymore because we need the votes.

Beautiful!

Stream Of Unconscious

If you turn off your mind, relax and float downstream ... and just read for a while ... the Wall Street Journal can explain how the Democratic primary in South Carolina just might change the face of racial politics in the South forever, since Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are trying such different strategies.

Clinton is using an old-style political machine, trying to scoop as many endorsements as possible from political leaders and media types and preachers; Obama is using a grass-roots campaign to mobilize an entirely different group of people, or so the WSJ wants me to believe.

They may be right. But they lost me when they started talking about poor blacks looking to their preachers for "both spiritual and political guidance". White people don't do that, of course. Not since 2004, anyway.

Meanwhile, in an effort destined to earn even more ... um ... credibility ... said Journal carries a piece from Norman Podhoretz called "Stopping Iran", in which he argues -- quite falsely -- that hardly anybody disputed the 2005 NIE which said Iran was racing to build nuclear weapons.

Podhoretz also asserts that Iran has no need for nuclear power since it has all that oil.

Let's see, now: If I had all that oil, and it was selling for $100 a barrel, with no sign of a price decrease ever ... Would I rather sell it ... or burn it? Hmm, that's a tough one. Podhoretz would burn it, obviously. Apparently he doesn't understand the value of money. So he argues that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear technology.

And it seems to me I've heard that one before. Have you? It's funny how Podhoretz doesn't seem too concerned about the entirely credible allegations made by Sibel Edmonds, who says US government insiders were selling nuclear secrets to the highest bidder on the black market, and much more.

Actually, no one in the US media seems much concerned about that; they're more interested in a hypothetical threat than evidence of any actual crimes, especially with crimes as serious as these -- crimes committed by powerful people who could ruin your reputation!

Naturally, the Democratically controlled Congress can't find time to look into it either, since their feckless leader, Henry Waxman, is so busy chasing down a chump who last played in the big leagues five years ago so he can find out what the chump knows about some illegal injections of steroids.

Illegal injections of cash are far less interesting to our bought-and-sold friends in the political/media circus, who don't give a damn about a million dead Iraqis but can't stop writing about one dead Marine.

So this is post-democratic America in its embryonic form: stupid; distracted; cut adrift from reality; corrupt to the bone; fighting a one-sided war of choice and bragging about it; and torturing people until they get mad at us.

And then, if they get mad enough to want to hurt us, we're morally obliged to torture them again, aren't we?

The Post-Democratic Process: Rupert Murdoch "Knew" NH Exit Polls Were "Wrong" About Hillary!

Gandhi, my Australian friend, wants to know how much Rupert Murdoch knew in advance about Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire surprise:

The editor of Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper, Rebekah Wade, yesterday told a House of Lords communications committee that Rupert Murdoch called her at 1.30am on the day of the New Hampshire primaries to warn her that the exit polls were wrong.

There has been heated speculation in the blogosphere that Hiliary Clinton's win in New Hampshire was rigged. And everybody is well aware that Murdoch favors Clinton in 2008.

So was Murdoch just (a) hanging on the wires, keeping a close eye on results, and checking that his UK morning editions didn't stuff up? Or was (b) he in on the vote rigging and controlling the story he wanted to see in print?

If you answered (c) we'll probably never know, you are probably right.

I was offline at the time and couldn't have rigged it for her even had I wanted to. I didn't participate in the exit poll, either, and I don't know what happened there.

If you know something, please share.

From One Little Hitler To Another

Elvis Costello was in the news the other day.

Yeah, Elvis Costello, whose broken-hearted love song, "Alison", brought him into the London punk limelight and brought us its key phrase, "My Aim Is True" ...

Elvis Costello, whose "Armed Forces" remains one of the most powerful anti-military sets ever recorded ...

that Elvis Costello...

... that Elvis Costello showed woeful ignorance of American politics (or something much more sinister -- I shudder to think!) when he performed at Hillary Clinton's 60th birthday party last weekend.

It nearly broke my cold heart.

Elvis

sang "Happy Birthday Mrs. President" and [...] raucous versions of hit songs including "Pump it Up,"

according to Reuters.

And even if it breaks my heart again to say it, I have something to say to Elvis Costello.

Pump It Down!, Elvis.

Your aim was false that time!

His aim was a lot better when he was writing "Armed Forces", so let's hope it was only a momentary lapse.

This one's called...

Two Little Hitlers

Why are we racing to be so old?
I'm up late pacing the floor, I won't be told
you have your reservations, I'm bought and sold
I'll face the music, I'll face the facts,
even when we walk in polka dots and checkered slacks,
bowing and squawking, running after tidbits,
bobbing and squinting, just like a nitwit,
two little hitlers will fight it out until
one little hitler does the other one's will
I will return, I will not burn
down in the basement

I need my head examined; I need my eyes excited
I'd like to join the party but I was not invited
you make a member of me, I'll be delighted
I wouldn't cry for lost souls; you might drown
dirty words for dirty minds, written in a toilet town
dial me a Valentine, she's a smooth operator
It's all so calculated, she's got a calculator
she's my soft-touch typewriter and I'm the great dictator
two little hitlers will fight it out until
one little hitler does the other one's will
I will return, I will not burn

a simple game of self-respect
you flick a switch and the world goes off
nobody jumps as you expect
I would have thought you would have had enough by now
you call selective dating for some effective mating
I thought I'd let you down, dear, but you were just deflating
I knew right from the start: we'd end up hating
pictures of the merchandise plastered on the wall
we can look so long as we don't have to talk at all
you say you'll never know him; he's not a natural man
he doesn't want your pleasure; he wants as no one can
he wants to know the names of all those he's better than
two little hitlers will fight it out until
one little hitler does the other one's will
I will return, I will not burn
I will return, I will not burn

You can listen to "Two Little Hitlers" here -- and if you ignore the first few seconds and don't look at the artwork, it's not too bad. (BTW this track features some awesome fretless bass from Bruce Thomas -- just about perfect, IMO.)

Even though my heart is broken, I shouldn't be too critical of Elvis.

Billy Crystal performed at Hillary's birthday party, too.

And he's American.

He should know better.