Another Broken Reed ~ Rachel Maddow

She ain't kidding - and in more ways than one!

From investigative journalist Robert Parry's excellent piece:
When ‘Disinformation’ Is Truth, yesterday. It begins:

The anti-Russian McCarthyism that has spread out from the United States to encompass the European Union, Canada and Australia has at its core an implicit recognition that neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy have failed.

Later in the piece, under section heading New McCarthyism and Maddow:

But it appears now that many liberals and even progressives are so blinded by their hatred of Trump that they haven’t thought through the wisdom of their new alliance with the neocons — or the fairness of smearing fellow Americans as “Putin apologists.”

Meanwhile, mainstream news organizations have abandoned even the pretense of professional objectivity in their propagandistic approach toward anything related to Russia or Trump. For instance, I would defy anyone reading The New York Times’ coverage of Russia to assess it as fair and balanced when it is clearly snarky and sneering.

It also turns out that this New McCarthyism has become profitable for its leading practitioners. The New York Times reported on Monday that the ratings for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow are soaring with her frequent anti-Russian rants.

“Now, rattled liberals are surging back [to network television], seeking catharsis, solidarity and relief,” the Times wrote, citing a Kentucky woman explaining why she has become a devotee of Maddow: “She’s always talking about the Russians!”

Frankly, for the past dozen years, I’ve wondered about Maddow. I first heard her on the radio in August 2005 when she was a summer fill-in at Air America reporting on President George W. Bush’s Katrina fiasco, which she partly blamed on the deployment of Louisiana National Guard units to Iraq, so they couldn’t help evacuate flooded New Orleans.

It was clear that Maddow was talented and her excoriation of the Iraq War was on point, although – by summer 2005 – it didn’t require a huge amount of journalistic courage to slam Bush over the Iraq War. As I watched her career rise through a regular Air America gig to her show on MSNBC and then to stardom as an anchor on the network’s election coverage, I always wondered whether she would put her lucrative corporate acceptance at risk and go against the grain at a tough journalistic moment.

Now, Maddow’s behavior in becoming a modern-day mainstream-media Joe McCarthy has put my doubts to rest. She is riding high in the ratings by keeping her whip hand coming down hard on the bash-Russia steed. She is putting her career or her politics ahead of journalism.

Like so many other Democrat/liberal/neocon activists, Maddow not only ignores the evidentiary gaps in the Russia-did-it conspiracy theory but she seems oblivious to the dangers of her opportunism. By stirring up this McCarthyistic frenzy, she and her “never-Trump” allies make a rational policy toward nuclear-armed Russia nearly impossible. Thus, she is contributing to the real risk of a hot war with Russia that could lead to the annihilation of life on the planet.

So Ms Maddow, in my estimation too, has traced a downward spiral since 2008, when I wrote, still somewhat starry eyed:

Rachel Maddow: One For The Future? (9 Sep. 2008)

I wonder who'll be on the political scene in the USA around 10 years from now, say for the elections in 2016 and 2020? One name in the future's political headlines which wouldn't surprise me a bit would be Rachel Maddow. She's 35 now, in ten years she'll be just about the right age to run as a presidential candidate, or be chosen as VP, having perhaps done a stint in the House or Senate in intervening years.

Rachel's new TV show, which has all the hallmarks of being "the one to watch" for those keen on politics, was aired for the first time last night. She has been seen fairly regularly on MSNBC all year, doing pundit duty along with Olbermann, Matthews, Buchanan and the rest, as well as presenting a regular radio show on Air America. She strikes me as the type of person for whom US politics is crying out. She oozes confidence, speaks and debates with a no nonsense clarity, clear grasp of issues, but never loses her calm, friendly approach.

After astrological meanderings on her natal chart:

It'll be interesting to watch Rachel Maddow's progress from here on.

However, by June 2012 I wrote in a post HERE:

I no longer watch MSNBC (bad for my BP!) In the days when I did watch, when Rachel Maddow's show first aired, in 2008, I wrote a post about her and her natal chart. That was before the political scales dropped from my eyes. I still enjoy hearing Rachel speak when interviewed outside of her show, but feel now much as Nick Gillespie indicated. He accused Maddow and Maher of being partisan. Well DUH!! They are. Maher gave President Obama's campaign fund $1 million cheque recently. In Maddow's professional eyes Democrats and President Obama can do no wrong. We have no means of knowing how she really feels....................................................Talking heads - all of them, including Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert as well as the MSNBC and Fox crowd are there to serve a single purpose - support for the two political establishments in the USA, to keep the controversy going, keep the country divided.

Broken reeds - so many of 'em to left and to right, so many I used to admire, but now see the error of my starry-eyed ways!

The Obscenity of Drones

Why is the subject of drone use in countries with whom the USA or UK are not at war not prominent in political discussion? A few blogs and internet news sources have carried good pieces on the topic of drone warfare, but only infrequently. I was heartened to see a video clip from a recent Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC where she asks a variation of that question. She frames it along the lines of "why isn't Mitt Romney bringing up the topic in his campaign speeches?" She admits to seeing the President's stance on the issue as being "hair raising" - which is as close as anyone on MSNBC is likely to get to criticising He Who Must Not be Criticised. That's why I stopped watching MSNBC.

Here's the clip from Rachel Maddow's show. For any passing reader without 7+ minutes to spare, scoot in to around the halfway point, after she stops talking about Paul Ryan.

I've looked around the net to see what others are thinking on this issue, found a Pew Poll SEE HERE which shows that in 17 of 20 countries, more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Americans are the clear outliers on this issue – 62% approve of the drone campaign, including most Republicans (74%), independents (60%) and Democrats (58%).

A 62% approval?.... of exercises which result in often killing unarmed civilians and children?.... in countries with which the US or UK are not at war? So....would this 62% be willing to accept reciprocal behaviour from other countries on the US or UK?

Some comments around the net state the view that, in a nutshell, "war is dirty, people will be killed". We are not at war - that is the crux of this issue. If drones had been available during World War II (doodlebugs were their precurser I guess) well then, perhaps the use of drones would have been acceptable as a form of self defence. Had that war been lost, Nazi rule would have spread world wide. War has not been declared.

This from

http://www.pri.org/stories/world/asia/new-report-finds-u-s-drone-warfare-is-traumatizing-innocent-civilians-11581.html
.....The United States government doesn't acknowledge that civilians have been killed in drone attacks. Making matters worse, aid workers, first responders and even locals tend to wait several hours before going to the scene of a drone strike to help the wounded, for fear of a second strike following.

Clive Stafford Smith, the founder and director of Reprieve, a nonprofit organization based in the United Kingdom that sponsored the report, said the academics visited 130 places in Pakistan, talking to survivors, to create their report.
"Drone warfare is traumatizing the entirety of Waziristan," he said. "Of the 800,000 people in Waziristan, the vast majority are not extremists. These folks have these drones flying round and round over their heads, 24 hours a day. And it's causing serious psychological trauma." Among those victims, he said, are children.

Smith said, in addition to witnesses who talk about their trauma there are doctors who are treating people for those sorts of illnesses and an "exponential increase" in the use of psychiatric drugs for treating anxiety and depression.

"We're talking common sense. My mother was in London in 1944 when there were various drones fired overhead at London. She's 85 today and she still remembers very vividly the effect of these things coming down," Smith said. "That's the same thing that's going on in Pakistan today."

Mentioned in that piece was someone who lived through the London blitz. As a young child I lived through the blitz too, not in London but in Hull, an east coast port bombed regularly by the Germans. The experience possibly helps to understand and empathise with the ordinary people of territories being drone-attacked by the US/UK . Though very young at the time of World War II, I retain clear memories and shallow-buried fears. The sound of a siren still makes my blood run cold almost 70 years after. I remember blocks of houses disappearing overnight - their occupants, including some of my little firends, blasted to kingdom come. I remember, after being evacuated to live with grandparents, watching from an upstairs window at night, the far horizon red with the fires in my parent's home city after more bombings. Young as I was, I understood that the morning could bring devastating news.

People who consider current drone use to be just and necessary ought to "walk a while in the shoes" of those civilians who live in fear because of what we in the US and UK are allowing our governments to do in our name.

What about the people actually doing the remote killing?
FROM HERE

Drone operators see their intended targets 'wake up in the morning, do their work, go to sleep at night,' explains Dave, another high-tech murderer who killed from an office cockpit at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base and who now trains new recruits to the cyber-killer corps at New Mexico’s Holloman Air Force Base.

When instructed to kill someone he has stalked from the air for a prolonged period:
"I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy. I have a duty, and I execute my duty." When the deed is done, he points out, nobody "in my immediate environment is aware of anything that has occurred."

Another drone operator named Will insists:
"There was a good reason for killing the people that I did, and I go through it in my head over and over and over."

All very heroic, isn't it? (Irony)

I'll summarise in a single sentence.
Use of drones outside of a legitimate war is obscene.

The Lion and The Ram ~ Gillespie & Maddow ~ Partisan?

It was fun to see "the lion" and "the ram" go head to head a couple of times, or more, on Friday evening's Real Time.

The Lion with Sun and Venus in Leo: Nick Gillespie of Reason.com and Reason TV (an "independent" libertarian). The Ram with Sun and Venus in Aries: Rachel Maddow, MSNBC talking head with a nightly show supporting just about anything the president and Democrats say or do.

I no longer watch MSNBC (bad for my BP!) In the days when I did watch, when Rachel Maddow's show first aired, in 2008, I wrote a post about her and her natal chart. That was before the political scales dropped from my eyes. I still enjoy hearing Rachel speak when interviewed outside of her show, but feel now much as Nick Gillespie indicated. He accused Maddow and Maher of being partisan. Well DUH!! They are. Maher gave President Obama's campaign fund $1 million cheque recently. In Maddow's professional eyes Democrats and President Obama can do no wrong. We have no means of knowing how she really feels.

Nick Gillespie asked Rachel Maddow to name a Republican she likes or would choose over a Democrat. Rachel didn't answer. Bill Maher said that it was an unfair question. Had it been 20 years ago, he could name one. But Republicans of today are so far gone that there is a lack of options, he said.

Gillespie went on thoughout the show to try to dominate the conversation, talking over everyone else - all the time. I rolled back my initial positive reaction.

(NOTE: The matter under debate on Friday when the "spat" began was the recent refusal of Attorney General Eric Holder to hand over certain documents related to Fast and Furious - a federal operation allowing weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so the arms could be traced to the higher echelons of Mexican drug cartels. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the operation, lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which have been linked to crimes, including the fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010 and some 200 Mexicans.)

Partisan in political context = a committed member of a political party. The term often carries negative connotation, referring to people who wholly support their party's policies and remain reluctant to acknowledge correctness on the part of their political opponents in almost any situation.

Talking heads - all of them, including Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert as well as the MSNBC and Fox crowd are there to serve a single purpose - support for the two political establishments in the USA, to keep the controversy going, keep the country divided. They are, have to be, partisan. They never, never criticise their own or acknowledge anything or anyone who might be saying or doing anything halfway decent from the other "team".

If the people of USA, or most of them, would simply stop with the partisanship it could be the start of something interesting. If they'd only be willing to see through what's really going on, throw away their team shirts, stop labelling themselves and others.

Am I partisan? Not with regard to Republican/Democrat - I'm neither. But could I name someone from the right who I admire (bearing in mind that I'm about as left as you can go without falling off the edge of the USA)? Well.... I 'd name Jon Huntsman, Republican, as a guy I'd have felt quite comfortable voting for in the presidential election, had he been given the support he should have received to obtain the nomination.

On a lighter(?) note - we came across this sign outside a gas station, just across the Red River in Texas, on Friday ~~


My immediate comment: Will someone please tell both of 'em that they ought to be doing a better job?!

Rachel Maddow: One For The Future?

I wonder who'll be on the political scene in the USA around 10 years from now, say for the elections in 2016 and 2020? One name in the future's political headlines which wouldn't surprise me a bit would be Rachel Maddow. She's 35 now, in ten years she'll be just about the right age to run as a presidential candidate, or be chosen as VP, having perhaps done a stint in the House or Senate in intervening years.

Rachel's new TV show, which has all the hallmarks of being "the one to watch" for those keen on politics, was aired for the first time last night. She has been seen fairly regularly on MSNBC all year, doing pundit duty along with Olbermann, Matthews, Buchanan and the rest, as well as presenting a regular radio show on Air America. She strikes me as the type of person for whom US politics is crying out. She oozes confidence, speaks and debates with a no nonsense clarity, clear grasp of issues, but never loses her calm, friendly approach.

Rachel Maddow was born on 1 April 1973 in Castro Valley, California. I can find no time of birth, so here's a chart set for 12 noon. Moon position will be inaccurate, though it will be somewhere in Pisces. Ascendant must remain a mystery, in the absence of birth time.



Sun and Venus in Aries, Jupiter and Mars in Aquarius, Saturn in Gemini, Moon and Mercury in Pisces. Outer planets in Libra and Sagittarius.

Her Aries and Aquarius planets are in harmonious sextile; Saturn in Gemini also sextiles Sun/Venus in Aries and trines the Aquarius planets - more harmony!
A sweetly linked line-up, indicating a very "together" person, enthusiastic, energetic, abundant intelligence, ability to analyse, and disciplined communicative skills all work together in harmony. Moon and Mercury in Pisces reflect another side of Rachel's personality, her sensitive and comapssionate nature, via Mercury this softens her style, which otherwise might come over as cold or dictatorial, which she definitely is not!

Rachel is well known for her unstinting research and preparation, a reflection of workhorse Saturn in Gemini, and Jupter/Mars in analytical Aquarius.


"The former Rhodes scholar, with a doctorate in political science from Oxford, is writing a book about military politics in postwar America and is famous at MSNBC for bringing a scholarly rigor to her preshow research and preparation. She has been known to arrive at Rockerfeller Center from her Manhattan apartment nine hours before she is due to go on air, cloistering herself in a cubicle with an iPod as she reads and writes on the day's news.
"One of the things that separates Rachel from many people is the amount of fresh information she brings to her storytelling," said Wolff. "She really often isn't expressing an opinion as much as laying out facts that lead to the conclusion."(See here)

Rachel has had a good professional and mentoring relationship with MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann. Perhaps they relate well to each other because Olbermann's natal Sun at 7.01 Aquarius conjoins her natal Jupiter at 7.04 Aquarius, and is therefore also in harmonious aspect to her Aries and Gemini planets.

It'll be interesting to watch Rachel Maddow's progress from here on.