Parsing Promises: Feckless Harry Reid, Ever Supine, Makes A "Promise"

Today the senior leader of the gutless, spineless, useless, worthless Democratic caucus in the US Senate took questions from a flock of folks who desperately wanted to hear the Majority Leader of the Senate say something, anything, onto which they might attach their tattered hopes about reining in the horrendous, criminal, perpetual abuses rained down upon the Congress, the People, and the Constitution by the vicious fascist pigs installed in the ShiteHouse these past 7 years and change.

This is the full ThinkProgress report on the procedings at the blog FireDogLake, one of those cool, careful A-List blogs on which I am not exactly banned, but am shunned and my posts are ALWAYS held for hours by the limp-dick mods over there (cuz, you know, sometimes I'm impolite.)

Reid promises Senate hearings on Pentagon propaganda program.»

During today’s Firedoglake Book Salon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) promised that the Senate would be holding hearings on the Pentagon’s propaganda program, which was first disclosed by the New York Times on April 20. Reid’s announcement is the first time the Senate leadership has indicated that it intends to hold hearings:

LISH: Senator, are you planning to hold hearings on the illegality of the Pentagon’s propaganda training program of retired military officers that was recently exposed by the New York Times and Glenn Greenwald?

REID: The answer is yes. I have personally spoken to Chairman Levin and he is tremendously concerned as I. And we are proceeding accordingly.

To which I replied:

You really gotta parse this kinda crap. Reid is a very careful pol, slicker'n snot on a brass door-knob, talking to an audience he knows basically WANTS to believe him, but whom he cannot tell the actual truth without incurring their enmity and obloquy. Plus he's being quoted. By everyone in the room. He's on a propaganda tight-rope, which he negotiates very skillfully, going so far as to convince fairly clever people that he promised something at which he merely alluded.

Notice he doesn't say he and levin are GONNA hold hearings.

He says they're 'very concerned' and agrees with the questioner that they PLAN to hold hearings. 'Proceeding accordingly" is utterly meaningless, a weasel-out that proves conclusively he didn't promise any fragging thing. "According to what?" According to Plan, of course. And the farking Plan is to let the clock run out...

Nothing is gonna happen. Get it? No promise. No investigation. No impeachment. No sending out the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, with the Capitol Police, to snag Rove, Rice, and the rest.

Nagahapun. Nada. Jack. Diddley-squat.

It's a fuukin' election year. What ELSE was he gonna say. I just wish the hot-shot bloggers were a little more critical as interpreters of propaganda.