tpp - die! die!

The TPP is this year's Iraq "liberation",  pressed in the press with pure bullshit and a patronizing tone for those who, inexplcably, oppose it. For an almost perfect example, look no further than the business section of the NYT, where the TPP is presented as an orthodox free trade pact about lowering tarrifs - which we know, by now, is a lie, pure and simple. Itt's all 1850 in the way the NYT has tailored their presentation of the deal. 

“I’m still hopeful,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior researcher with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who characterized the vote on Friday as a vehicle for Democrats to show their displeasure with aspects of the pact. “This was a way of them stomping their feet, but in the end I think the president will get his way.”

Bill Lane, director of global government affairs for Caterpillar, echoed Mr. Hufbauer’s view that the door was not completely shut. “Even though the process is temporarily stalled, we are optimistic,” he said.

Mark Grayson, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry trade group, said that the group was hopeful “that the House will pass the bill so it can get to the president’s desk.”

Notice how the press rolls. These quotes are unaccompanied by questions. There's no sense that there are any questions to ask Caterpillar, or Silicon Valley, or the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Rather, we first get a cascade of quotations which all push a p.o.v., and then at the bottom of the article we get a few opposing quotations, which are treated much as though their locutors were advocating man boy love. That is how it goes at the NYT. 

The headline for the political analysis by the ever rebarbative Peter Baker (whose reporting back in the heady days of the Bush era showed how sycophancy can be a real career upper) calls the vote against the TPP political dysfunction - so much for thinking that the anti-TPP side has any reason behind it. I mean, in Baker's world, a bill to fasttrack a pact that is highly classfied except for its makers among the plutocracy is an obvious slam dunk! Oh those slam dunks. We all have to swallow them over and over. 

In fact, using the method of mirror reading that helps one see through the bullshit, the vote Friday was a rare instance of Washington functioning - functioning as it was set up to function. Only in the ruinous 21st century would a poisonous secret tractate like the TPP be considered the kind of no-brainer deal that we should all let ourselves be yoked with.  

I hope the Dems reading the holy NYT don't get the shakes. They are doing the right thing.