Stockholm

No, THC did not go there nor does he have the syndrome.  It's the title of Chrissie Hynde's just released first solo album and where she recorded the album with Bjorn Yttling, the Swedish musician and producer with whom she co-wrote the songs.  Yttling was four years old when Chrissie founded the Pretenders.

While Stockholm does not have anything to match the early Pretenders classics Middle Of The Road, Talk Of The Town, Brass In Pocket and Night In My Veins, it finds Hynde in fine voice and contains a lot of strong songs.

THC's favorites are Like In The Movies, Down The Wrong Way (featuring the up and coming guitarist Neil Young playing a (TM) Neil Young Guitar Solo), A Plan Too Far and In A Miracle.   Here's a sampler of the songs from the album.  Just click on the titles to hear each.  Unfortunately, Down The Wrong Way clip does not contain the Young guitar solo.

It's Special Prosecutor Time

At least that's what Ron Fournier of National Journal thinks and I agree.  Fournier is a journalist who's made no secret that he is favorably disposed toward the Democrats and has written articles critical of the Republican take on this matter but at this point he writes:

If the IRS can't find the emails, maybe a special prosecutor can . . .
The announcement came late Friday, a too-cute-by-half cliche of a PR strategy to mitigate backlash

The White House is stonewalling the IRS investigation. The most benign explanation is that Obama's team is politically expedient and arrogant, which makes them desperate to change the subject, and convinced of their institutional innocence. That's bad enough. But without a fiercely independent investigation, we shouldn't assume the explanation is benign.

It is difficult to believe that these emails were lost in a crash on Lois Lerner's computer, which is the government claim, since government agencies have multiple server backups and, in fact, are required to do so by government regulation. 

My only disagreement is that I think the special prosecutor needs to also investigate what, by all appearances, appears to be a phony investigation by Eric Holder's Justice Department which should be no surprise since, as Fournier notes, the President himself has said that there is "Not even a smidgen of corruption" (he must have come to this conclusion as a result of the findings of his parallel, independent investigation of the IRS).

And further to my comment in Friday's post about the media, the New York Times carried NO mention of the missing emails in either Saturday or Sunday's editions.  The paper's stenographers are, no doubt, awaiting word from the Administration on the proper Party Line to take before they publish anything.  This is standard operating procedure for the Times.  A great example is Fast and Furious, the Holder Justice Department scandal in which ATF agents facilitated the legal purchase of semi-automatic weapons from dealers in the American southwest and then arranged their transfer, in an untraceable manner, to Mexican drug cartels.  The result is that weapons purchased under this program were used to kill at least two American border agents and several hundred people in Mexico (perhaps the Administration's unofficial immigration policy was "kill 'em before they cross the border").  Fast and Furious caused a great outcry in Mexico but readers of the New York Times would not have known since the paper ignored the controversy completely for several years until the paper's Justice Department stenographer was summoned by Eric Holder who informed him that those raising the allegations were racists which the Times dutifully reported in a front page article.

Also in line with my prior comments, Powerline, a blog run by two Washington lawyers, which in my experience has good and pretty reliable sources within DOJ, printed an email from a lawyer in the department:

I’m a DOJ lawyer, so you obviously cannot use my name or any identifying information. But the idea that a “hard drive crash” somehow destroyed all of Ms. Lerner’s intra-government email correspondence during the period in question [2009-2011] is laughable. Government email servers are backed up every night. So if she actually had a hard drive fail, her emails would be recoverable from the backup. If the backup was somehow also compromised, then we are talking about a conspiracy.

He reiterates in a postscript:

I’m serious about your keeping any identifying information out of the media. Things are very, very bad.

I Thought Rose Mary Woods Had Retired

Late this afternoon as part of the Friday afternoon news dump, the IRS informed the House Ways and Means Committee that there is a mysterious "two-year gap" in the emails of Lois Lerner, the Democratic political appointee at the heart of the IRS scandal.  To be precise, for the period January 2009 to April 2011, the IRS can produce Lerner emails to and from other IRS employees but cannot find any to or from outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, the Federal Election Commission or offices of Democrat congressmen - in other words, the most critical emails are missing.

For those who may not remember, Rose Mary Woods was Richard Nixon's secretary who, after the 1974 revelation of an 18 1/2 minute gap on an audio tape of an Oval Office conversation on June 20, 1972, right after the Watergate break-in, took partial responsibility for a mistake leading to an erasure during the transcription process.  Miss Woods' explanation was difficult to accept (the picture above illustrates the "Rose Mary Stretch") though very few thought she did it intentionally.  For an interesting and informed recent article speculating on how, why and by whom the tape was erased read this article.

The Lerner email disclosure comes only a week after the IRS acknowledged to the House that it had illegally turned over to the FBI up to 1.1 million pages of confidential taxpayer information as part of its seek and destroy mission against Tea Party groups.

The Lerner emails as well as the information illegally disclosed by the IRS was requested by Congress more than a year ago.  It is inconceivable that the Department of Justice did not know what happened well prior to June of 2014.  There are a hundred questions that come to mind that must be answered about the missing emails.  It deserves a full investigation and DOJ is incapable of conducting it.

Of all the Obama Administration controversies, the IRS one is by far the most troubling because it goes to the heart of the public trust in government.  If the agency that for the average citizen is that most powerful in the federal government cannot be trusted with the sensitive information it has and, in fact, will harass its political enemies then the very foundation of our system is shaken.

The Justice Department's behavior has been disgraceful from appointing an Obama campaign donor to oversee the criminal investigation to the failure of the FBI to contact any of the groups or their attorneys who have complained of the IRS behavior.  The President, after first saying he was disturbed by the scandal, now dismisses it as a nothing.  He does that because he knows he can get away with it which illustrates a bigger problem for our country.

The bigger problem is that both the media and the permanent federal bureaucracy (non-political appointees) lean heavily liberal creating a curious dynamic making Democratic abuses of power more threatening than Republican ones.

When there is a Republican administration and it takes executive actions that offend the permanent bureaucracy it reacts by leaking copiously to sympathetic sources in the media.  And when those leaks reach media outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post they get amplified and picked up by other media and get elevated to issues that are in the press day after day.  It's hard to keep anything truly secret.  While THC may think it is often unfair in how a particular issue is played by the media, overall he sees that as a good thing for our governance structure.

But when a Democratic administration is in place there is a different dynamic.  Because the bureaucracy is more supportive of the goals of the administration there is less leaking and to the extent there are leaks it is often because the administration is not seen as sufficiently liberal.  These leaks can be picked up by large media outlets because they will occasionally criticize the Party from the left.  If it is the much rarer leak from a dissident conservative bureaucrat leaks it is less likely to be picked up by the general media because of its disinterest (or perhaps, disbelief would be the better word) or distrust, because the perceived source is seen as conservative.  Although it did not involve bureaucratic links think of the general media's shock since October as the impacts of Obamacare became more visible; the cancellation of policies, increased deductibles and other costs and narrowed doctor access.  None of those issues were a surprise to THC because conservative health policy wonks have been pointing these issues out since 2010.  So why was the media so surprised?  They live in an intellectually closed world where many, most prominently the New York Times, serve merely as stenographers for the progressive movement.

That's why a slew of issues that would be headline scandals day after day in the Times and Post in a Republican administration disappear in a Democratic one.

The IRS scandal poses an excellent example of this phenomenon.  Significant evidence arises of politically targeted agency review of Tea Party groups seeking exemptions arises and of leaks of confidential applicant information to liberal partisan; senior IRS political appointees take the Fifth when questioned by Congress;  the Attorney General announces that DOJ finds no evidence of criminal activity after an investigation headed by a government lawyer who made the maximum individual contributions allowed by law to the President's campaigns and in which the government investigators never attempted to contact any of the complaining entities or their attorneys; more data and emails keep flowing indicating problems at the agency; for details see the voluminous coverage at the Tax Prof Blog. Yet most of the media seemed relieved to hear the official explanations and have no continuing interest.

Further to THC's point about the makeup of the bureaucracy, when the IRS scandal first broke some of the Administration's defenders pointed out the President Nixon, a Republican, tried to use the IRS to audit his political enemies. The difference is that Nixon ran into an IRS chief who shut down the President's attempt to politically manipulate the bureaucracy.

So if you are interested in transparency in government vote Republican.  They may be bozos but at least you will know what they are doing!

Burning Bush

(Jan Palach)
Some of my posts are planned well in advance.  When visiting the Museum of Communism I knew I'd be writing a post on it.  Some posts are more spontaneous.  It was only when writing the Museum of Communism post and finding myself mentioning Vaclav Havel and Frank Zappa that I decided to write about Plastic People.  Other times themes become apparent to me only over time and this post is an example, tying together the Museum of Communism with last week's post on the lonely Tank Man who courageously confronted a tank column outside Tiananamen Square in 1989.

The link is the death of Jan Palach, a 20 year old student who, without letting anyone know in advance, set himself afire in Prague's Wenceslas Square on January 16, 1969 to protest the demoralization of the Czech people in the wake of the Soviet invasion of August 1968 which crushed the Prague Spring government of Alexander Dubcek.  Palach died three days later.  The act received world-wide publicity (I remember watching coverage at the time) symbolizing the plight of all peoples under communist domination and inspiring dissidents in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Palach's grave became a pilgrimage for those who resisted the regime until 1973 when the State removed his body cremating it to stop the visits.

Palach's self-sacrifice and its aftermath is the subject of a recent three-part HBO Europe documentary shown on Czech TV.  Directed by the Polish director, Agnieszka Holland, who also made the shocking, disturbing and moving drama of WWII and the Holocaust, Europa Europa (1990), Burning Bush brings to light the surprising story of a defamation suit brought against Communist Party officials in the wake of Palach's death.  Though doomed to failure it was one of the first actions by Czech dissidents to resist the regime and the lawyer representing the Palach family, Dagmar Buresova, eventually became the first Minister of Justice in post-Communist Czechoslovakia. 
The series has been edited for a limited film release and is being shown at the Film Forum in NYC.  It was reviewed by AO Scott of the NY Times who wrote:

"the film does a remarkably persuasive job of capturing the nightmarish and sometimes grimly comical quality of life under totalitarianism"

Palach was not the only self-immolation in protest of the Soviet invasion.  A month after his death Jan Zajic also burned himself in Wenceslas Square and six weeks later Evzen Plocek did the same in the main square of another Czech town.  Only after the fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe was it realized that the first self-immolation protesting the Soviet action took place in Poland in September 1968.  Ryszard Siwiec, a 59 year old veteran of the WWII Polish Home Army burned himself in front of 10,000 people at an event in Warsaw.  The story was suppressed in the Polish press and to the extent there was any public mention, people were told it was an accident caused by spilling vodka and smoking but Siwiec left a written note explaining his motives and after the fall of the Polish regime in 1989 his story was told in a documentary and today he is honored in his country.(Siwiec's self immolation, from Wikipedia).

Palach's memory served as a rallying point for dissidents for the next twenty years.  On the 20th anniversary of his death a coalition of opposition groups planned Jan Palach Week in Prague.  The most prominent group, Charter 77 issued a statement on the meaning of Palach's act:

“He died because he wanted to shout as loud as possible. He wanted us to realize what was happening to us, to see what we were really doing, and to hear what we were saying in those times of reputedly inevitable concessions, “reasonable” compromises, and hopefully clever tactical ploys. We started forgetting that something has to resist even the greatest pressure, something fundamental that cannot be bought or sold, but that is absolutely essential for maintaining our human dignity.”  

In conjunction with the week, Vaclav Havel, spokesman for Charter 77, issued an appeal against any further acts of self-immolation.

The State banned the planned memorial service in Wenceslas Square and arrested opposition leaders, including Havel, who was imprisoned for four months.  Nonetheless crowds gathered in the square for several days until dispersed by water cannon and security forces.  Ten months later the communist regime was overthrown in the Velvet Revolution.

You can learn more about Jan Palach at the memorial website established by Charles University which he attended.

Today there is a memorial in Wenceslas Square to honor Jan Palach and Jan Zajic.

Plastic People

Frank Zappa and the President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, Prague 1990

THC's last post mentioned the Czech psychedelic anti-communist band, Plastic People of the Universe and their leading supporter, Vaclav Havel.  Both were fans of Frank Zappa.

And here is Plastic People from the 1967 album Absolutely Free by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

Museum of Communism

While THC and Ms THC were on their recent visit to Prague (a beautiful city - go see it), their host and dedicated blog fan, JS, took THC to see the Museum of Communism, conveniently located across a passageway from a McDonalds and right next to a casino.  The Museum bills itself as featuring "Communism: The Dream, The Reality and The Nightmare", accomplishing that goal admirably in a small space with fascinating exhibits that can be seen in a one hour visit.

                                          (All other photos in post from Museum of Communism)
Czechoslovakia, the Bohemian and Moravian provinces of which have constituted the Czech Republic since 1993, was born when the four century rule of the Austrian Hapsburgs collapsed in 1918.  From 1918 to 1938 the country was a vibrant and prosperous democracy.  That abruptly ended in September 1938 when Britain and France acceded to Hitler's demands to transfer the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia to Germany thus denuding the Czechs of their defensive perimeter, in return for which Hitler promised that Germany had no further territorial ambitions in Europe, a promise that lasted for a mere six months.  In March 1939, Slovakia declared its independence from the rest of Czechoslovakia, a declaration immediately recognized by Germany, which had encouraged the Slovak action.  The Nazis then ended the existence of the defenseless rump state converting it into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ruled by Reinhardt Heydrich of the SS.

Czechoslovakia remained under the brutal Nazi rule until 1945 when it was occupied by advancing Soviet troops who were initially welcomed as liberators.  Like the rest of Eastern Europe the country came increasingly under the domination of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union in the immediate years after the war until in February 1948 it officially became a communist state, plunging back into a darkness that was to last for four decades.  One of the benefits of being a communist state was that you were able to put up giant statues of Josef Stalin, like this one that loomed over Prague in the 1950s.

The commies ran their usual gameplan on the country which the museum takes you through with its exhibits, including contemporary propaganda posters.

(The State and the The People work together to ensure no American spies will enter the country; oh, and by the way, we'll kill The People if they attempt to leave our Socialist Paradise)

           (Supporting the freedom loving people of North Korea against the American aggressors!)

(Control of the educational system was key to creating The Socialist Man.  The poster notes that "Pupils were raised or encouraged . . . towards class hatred against more wealthy classes, hostility towards democratic states as well as towards religion")

(The State Source Shops provide abundance to The People!  The Museum shows the reality - very few goods available for purchase though the privileged leadership cadre did have access to plentiful basic goods as well as luxuries.)

               (Timely arrival to work deals the decisive strike against the American aggressors!)

(This poster at the Museum explains how the Communist focus on materialism created a spiritual vacuum leading to environmental devastation and reductions of life span.)


In the spring of 1968, a new government came into power under Alexander Dubcek, promising "socialism with a human face" which proved to be too much for the Soviet Union which invaded in August 1968, installing a repressive puppet government which imposed "normalization", a synonym for alignment with Soviet policies.


During the early 1970s a Prague rock n roll band called Plastic People of the Universe (in tribute to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention) began to subtlety protest against the status quo, receiving the support of some intellectuals, Vaclav Havel, a writer, a man of outstanding moral clarity and courage, an astute observer of the psychology of the totalitarian state and one of the great figures of the 20th century.

                                                                 (Vaclav Havel)

The regime itself staggered on until November 1989 when it collapsed in the face of the relatively non-violent "Velvet Revolution".  The Museum features an inspiring video of the events of those November days.  The first President of the newly free Czechoslovakia was Vaclav Havel.


For the ash heap of history