GOP exists in alternate universe at bizarre, lie-filled convention

By Marc McDonald

Recently, I had a political discussion with a right-wing acquaintance. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. During the argument, my acquaintance called Obama an "idiot." When I asked for some proof of this, he replied, "Well, Obama said 'Internets' in an interview. He thinks it's called 'Internets.' That's really stupid."

Having grown weary of the discussion, I didn't even bother to challenge my acquaintance's contention. I did, though, think it was a bit odd. After all, the use of the term "Internets" was a well-known Bush blunder. Bush made the blunder during a debate with Al Gore in 2000. Amazingly, Bush made the mistake again in 2004, during a debate with John Kerry. It was the second screw-up that was widely ridiculed in the media.

"Was Rush now trying to somehow make the claim to his audience that this was in fact Obama's mistake?" I wondered.

Doing a little research on the Internet revealed that Obama once indeed did say "Internets." However, there was a big, big difference between the screwups made by Obama and Bush.

After all, when Obama said "Internets," he quickly corrected himself a few words later in the same sentence.

Obama is one of the most eloquent and intelligent speakers I've ever heard. But the fact is, like all modern U.S. presidents, he has an array of video cameras recording his words for hours every day. Given the grueling demands of his job and the stress that comes with it, it really shouldn't be surprising that he (or any president) might have an occasional verbal stumble. I mean, the only reason we don't have evidence of verbal stumbles by the likes of Washington and Jefferson is that there were no video cameras around in the 18th century.

Anyway, this whole episode got me to thinking. The right wing in this country has built up such a formidable propaganda network that wingnuts can happily dwell within it and never be exposed to the real world of actual facts, science, logic, reason, and truth. It's clear that my right-wing acquaintance got his "Obama said 'Internets'" quote from the likes of Drudge and that he has never even heard about Bush's far more famous (and uncorrected) blunder.

So Obama must be stupid, right? After all, Rush says so.

Such is the mind of the right-winger these days.

Which brings me to my main point. Politicians in America have historically never been the most honest class of people in the nation. But today's Republicans have set a new record for outrageous and blatant lies. It's gotten so bad that even the drowsy mainstream media has awoken from its usual slumber and started pointing out these outrageous lies.

For example, at the GOP convention, Paul Ryan trotted out his outrageous lie that Obama had supposedly promised to save a Wisconsin GM plant that later closed. Ryan no doubt thought that this latest lie wouldn't be scrutinized by a media establishment that has allowed so many other GOP lies to pass unchallenged.

No doubt, Ryan was stunned when numerous mainstream media outlets across the nation picked apart his GM fable and exposed it for the lie that it was. (As it turns out, the Wisconsin GM plant closed before Obama even took office).

Other GOP convention lies were similarly exposed by the media: "Obama has slashed Medicare!" "Obama is responsible for the U.S. credit downgrade!"

I'm sure that the GOP is stunned by the recent fact-checking by a newly-vigilant media. (And frankly, I'm as stunned as the GOP is, after watching the media let Republicans lie through their teeth for many years).

I guess the question now is this: why, in this election cycle, does the GOP have such contempt for the truth (especially when it can no longer get away with it)?

The answer to that question is simple. Because the GOP knows that, in fact, it can get away with it. This post's opening anecdote is proof positive of that. As that anecdote demonstrated, there are still many, many right-wingers out who get all of their news and info from the Fox/Drudge/Rush GOP Propaganda Network.

My right-wing acquaintance has never even heard that it was in fact Bush who made a fool of himself with his infamous "Internets" remarks. And my right-wing acquaintance will never even hear the mainstream media's debunking of Ryan's claims about the Wisconsin GM plant's closure. After all, he sure as hell isn't going to ever hear about it on Rush's show.

Such is the power of today's Great Right-Wing Propaganda Network. It is all-powerful, it is massive, it is everywhere, and it is 24 hours a day. If you are a wingnut getting your "news" from it, you'll never even feel the need to venture out in the real world and expose yourself to any other news outlet. And you'll happily continue to live in an alternate universe, where Obama will always be a Socialist Muslim Kenyan whose birth certificate is a fraud. 

(Cross-posted at BeggarsCanBeChoosers.)

Zen and the art of dismissal

By Capt. Fogg

So I hear these two guys talking on the radio. It's a conversation on the Amateur Radio 20 meter band, so half the world could be listening if conditions are right.

"I heard one of these protesters said he was there because 'Capitalism was taking over Wall Street' -- like it hasn't been Capitalist for over two hundred years! What an idiot!"

Well I'm assuming this guy isn't an economist any more than he might be an historian, and I'm assuming he got the information about what the "typical" loony-left and ignorant protesters are, from some artisanal propaganda source like Fox News.

Yes, of course, there were protesters baring their breasts and preforming other charming acts having little to do with constructive criticism of laissez-faire Capitalism. While I'm the last person to discourage such acts, I'm also the last person to believe that this kind of New Yorky opportunistic revelry has anything to do with the reasons more qualified critics like Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz would lend support by their presence: reasons having to do with Wall Street practices, their relationship to the market crash, the credit crunch and the dire state of the world economy -- subjects the people who script and sculpt the news would rather mock, would rather have you mock, than discuss intelligently.

For someone who suffered through the late 1960's as an adult, the techniques political enterprises use to dismiss well grounded movements hold no novelty. I remember quite well how anyone openly questioning the benefits and reasons for maintaining an unwinnable war in Southeast Asia was told to "get a job" and had his personal hygiene questioned as well. Easier to dismiss someone, albeit clad in Brooks Brothers attire and obviously gainfully employed, as a silly, radical and stupid "hippie" than to answer disturbing questions as why killing peasants, bombing millions and stifling free elections was preventing the 'lights of freedom from going out in America' as was wrongly claimed by the Right. Then, as now, the real struggle was to keep the lights of reason off and it was fought with the same kind of smugly simplistic and fatuous fallacies the powerful always use to crucify the good.

But the dishonest selection of unrepresentative examples and illuminating them as "typical" is ancient and not the property of right wing extremists. It's the sort of thing our foul species does to advance our cults and parties that want to keep us in squalor and ignorance and the occupation of Wall Street isn't about the irrational or Communist inspired hatred of freedom or free markets, as you know, or you wouldn't have read this far. It's about corruption and the lack of rules and oversight that promotes private exploitation of free markets to the detriment of all. The occupation of Wall Street is just another station of the cross where the sidewalks are filled with mockery and abuse.

That unwitting clowns are flopping about in over-sized shoes, honking horns and mocking, is inevitable, given the well-fed smugness of the stupid. Their invisible rulers are very good at making them eager participants in their degradation and suffering; but failure isn't inevitable. It's tempting for old-timers like me to opt out of the circus, but perhaps there's hope, unlikely as it may seem, that enough people can be made to see how they're protecting the practices of the looters, pillagers and vandals on Wall Street and in Washington to do something about it. There's hope, but I'm not yet ready to bet on it.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Loonies, Moonies and Republicans - oh my!

By Capt. Fogg

I remember reading Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon many years ago. It's about an old Soviet apparatchik fallen from grace and thrown into one of Stalin's prisons to await some miserable and sordid fate in the Lublyanka cellars. It came to mind because there's a mention in it of group photos of the Old Guard, the early, idealistic, committed Communists out to make a better world and how one by one, the official photos on the office wall were replaced by newer ones with certain people missing, certain others added.

It was long before digital photography and before it made it so easy for unscrupulous, devious, dishonest, America hating, indecent propagandists to produce photos of John Kerry and Jane Fonda, for instance, or Barack Obama saluting improperly -- and do it far better than old Ivan in the back room could with a razor and some glue. It is far too easy for the kind of trolls who work for right wing rags owned by foreign born lunatics like the Washington Times to produce photos of Elena Kagan in a black Turban so as to insinuate perhaps, and without any sense of journalistic integrity, that she's a terrorist supporter as well as a probably homosexual cross dresser and part of an "ominous plot" to insinuate Sharia Law into this country.

It's far too easy for an American public so insanely desperate, so grossly, childishly irresponsible that they will get into bed with the Moonies just to have one more idiotic piece of dung to fling at the opposition. It's so easy for a public who never reads to miss the parallels between what they do and what the people they claim to hate did. It's so easy for an infantile America to dismiss someone for having Communist cooties because they simply haven't the brains to do much more and certainly can't be expected to discuss her actual qualifications and record.

It's so hard for a person who likes to see people get their just desserts when those people are the country he so wishes to be proud of.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Premeditated violence

By Capt. Fogg

So whether you agree with me or not that Israel's attempt to enforce the blockade of Gaza by boarding a ship which refused normal inspection procedures and the attempt at self defense of the IDF Navy when attacked, was not the outrage it was meant to look like, do you agree that it's all Obama's fault? Sure it was says John Bomb-Bomb McCain. If Obama hadn't insisted that Israel freeze it's West Bank settlement construction, this wouldn't have happened. (insert WTF here!)

Michael Savage tells us that Obama "pressured" Israel into it without offering any of the evidence one would desire to back it up.

"As far as I know, it was Obama's administration that told them how to do this attack. It was probably one of America's peace-loving generals, who knows which one of them did it."

The use of probably by a Fox News member of course is as good as proof to the willfully Foxed, as is "as far as I know." Probably means 'definitively' to the Savage audience. Only a Liberal would question it. Only a Liberal would wonder why "peace loving" should be the equivalent of stupid, duplicitous and incompetent -- if not treasonous.

Of course knees are jerking in the Liberal camp as well, as Dennis Kucinich has written to President Obama suggesting that the country needs to "redefine its relationship with Israel" in the wake of the Gaza flotilla "raid." I'd ask him his opinion on redefining the US Coast Guard's daily practice of stopping and boarding ships with armed gunboats and armed inspectors as "raids." I'd ask him if an attack on the Coast Guard by a vessel refusing to stop and be inspected in wartime or peacetime, would be supported by him or excused by him because we're certainly doing it now in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Caribbean. I'd ask him whether our entire drug interdiction and human smuggling interdiction policies are " reckless, pre-meditated violence waged against innocent people." I'd try to do it without calling him an idiot and a hypocrite, but I doubt I could manage.

So if you still feel this was "premeditated violence" even when the violence occurred only after the "peaceful passengers" tried to kill the inspectors and threw one overboard, ask yourself what the US should do if a flotilla from Iran attempted to enter Iraq with an unspecified, un-inspected cargo, refused to heave to and be inspected and then brutally attacked our Navy when our Navy attempted to examine that cargo and passenger list.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

The outrage machine

By Capt. Fogg

As a boater, I'm aware that the Coast Guard has the right to board and inspect my vessel at any time and that I'm required to comply. Upon probable cause and perhaps just suspicion, they have a right to impound and literally disassemble my boat looking for drugs or contraband. Sometimes, as I'm given to understand, they've been known to be rather demanding in their searches, and other completely innocent, law abiding yacht captains I know have complained of dirty footprints on the ivory carpeting or greasy hand prints on the cherry paneling and have suggested that too much protest or grouchiness can earn one an extra careful inspection of safety equipment that might entail a ticket.

Of course we have a real problem in our coastal waters and particularly on the Atlantic coast with illegal immigrants arriving rather often, and then there's always the drug smugglers, so when the Coasties hail you it's best to heave to and not make waves, so to speak. In fact the US has a policy of stopping and boarding vessels anywhere on the high seas and at any time they suspect contraband. For an honest captain or crew, the idea of going after the Coast Guard with a boat hook or marlinespike is pretty much as unthinkable as it is counterproductive.

Yesterday however, when I read about the Israeli raid on the blockade runners attempting to bring supplies to Gaza, I was truly angered at what seemed like a pointless and brutal attack on unarmed civilians, and the video then available seemed to confirm that first impression. The media were making charges of piracy and it seemed less than hyperbolic at the time. Then I saw the rest of the video.

Aside from the question of the embargo itself, it has to be mentioned that the "relief" expedition was required to pass inspection before landing in Gaza, there being good reason for Israel to make sure no weapons or explosives or ammunition were being carried, or fugitives, or any persons wanted for questioning. The word of some Turkish political group that it's a peaceful enterprise is scarcely enough, although reports so far seem to gloss over the obvious with a coat of shiny outrage. Of course the flotilla had no intention of complying or of allowing themselves to be boarded peacefully and inspected, which carries the implication that they had indeed something to hide. The Israeli Navy did what any country would have done and boarded them.

The video that was not shown, of course, was the brutal attack by the passengers, who mobbed the inspectors, threw them to the deck and began beating them with clubs and metal rods. One Israeli was thrown overboard. They were vastly outnumbered. They began to defend themselves. There were casualties. It started to look less and less like piracy or even aggression. It began to look like deliberate provocation. It began to look like assault. It began to look like a mission of strategic martyrdom designed to turn Israel's ally Turkey against them. It looks like a success so far.

As usual, those who have their reasons for hating Israel will not compare the incident to trying to run through passport control at the airport and complaining about being tackled and detained. Those who are quite sure Hamas is justified in any act whatsoever that brings about the total annihilation of all Israelis wouldn't care and might rejoice if the ships had been blown out of the water without warning.

There's not much middle ground, there's not much changing of minds and a fortune is being spent on further polarization. This, in my opinion, is just part of that enterprise. The drums of manufactured outrage will continue to boom about mistreatment of "peaceful" passengers so long as doubt remains as to whether their mission had anything do do with anything but creating provocation against "Zionist Aggression." To some, the passengers will continue to be "tourists" and the haters of Israel will use any opportunity to appear as martyrs, but try this, if you dare: load up a flotilla of ships and announce your destination as Turkey and your cargo as aid for Islamist patriots resisting secularist aggression and when it comes time for customs inspection -- refuse to stop and be boarded. Set your "tourists" on the Turkish coast guard and customs inspectors with fence posts and bits of deck railing and furniture and claim that the secular Turkish government is attacking Islam and peaceful Islamists. Go on -- I dare you.




(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Is it over yet?

By Capt. Fogg

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

_____________

At what point do I give up and admit it's all over? The anti-Obama hate cult permeates every waking hour of my day, from technical seminars between engineers about packet radio networks interrupted by someone handing out disreputable Republican figures showing what a spendthrift radical socialist Obama is, from e-mails and phone calls asking me to participate in tax protests from people who won't have to pay taxes at all this year to the constant snide comments about Obama not saluting to this or apologizing for that. There are e-mailed clips of Gingrich preaching about the "most radical president" e-mailed jokes about him firing "cattle guards" and just about every captious hoax you'll find at Fact Check.org or Snopes.com or UrbanLegends.about.com. The mad blood is pumping like it's 1861, and US Rte 1 as it runs through my county, sports shiny new billboards for gun shops and firearms training.

"But these are real numbers" said a friend I should have thought would question any estimates published by the RNC about what "Obamacare" will cost.

"Real from the same people who predicted the Iraq war would cost nothing?" I replied? He looked puzzled. One doesn't suggest any doubt concerning the Party of God in these parts. One doesn't mention that 47% of American families won't owe any Federal income tax this year to a sign waving teabagger or that Iraq has cost us as much as WWII and isn't nearly over yet, not unless you want to invite hate mail and stuff thrown on your lawn, put your job at risk and have no friends at all. Want to know how Dr. Mudd felt? Just suggest that George W. Bush had anything to do with the policies that allowed Enron to ruin so many people, precipitated the bubble and credit crunch, started the most expensive war we've ever had on false pretenses. I spent years being called a traitor for suggesting that what has come to pass would come to pass, but exoneration is going to have to wait for the second coming.

Local papers have become unreadable and dripping with foamy saliva in their raving about Obama's religious agenda, secular and Islamic and I suspect that like many papers today, the owners thereof are writing some of them to use the power of insane hate to boost circulation.

One doesn't mention that Fox News, the fair and balanced network that is run entirely by and for Republicans, doesn't employ a single Democrat and not only slants stories, it invents them and remains silent when their hoaxes are revealed by every other outlet on earth. The Acorn Hoax, the Climategate hoax, the "Two Planeloads of Democrat Lawyers descend on Wasilla" hoax. People think you're crazy, or worse yet a Liberal -- you know, one of those black clad bearded guys who carry bombs and hate America. No one here will even listen for fear of being branded a liberal and people who call themselves skeptics can't imagine the Republican version of anything might be biased. No one will accept that Obama was elected because of the failure of a long Republican administration and Republican controlled congress.

The fact is that Dwight Eisenhower took equal flack for implementing integration to the horror of people who called him a radical, FDR took worse for Social Security, Johnson for his war on poverty and support of civil rights legislation and of course Medicare. Jefferson was called a tax-and-spend radical, because in America you can't just be wrong, you have to be the Devil, even the irrefutable facts can be the devil or the work of his hand.

What's the use of opposing it? Could any amount of truth or blather have stopped the civil war or done away with the institution of Slavery? Can anyone save America from the metastatic madness?

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Paging Andy Card ...Or: From the "What if paranoids are right" department

By J. Thomas Duffy

Funny, in doing a Google search this morning, on the Obama Campaign for President, I couldn't find "A covert CIA Manipulation Program you can believe in", anywhere



Earlier this week, Adrian Chen, over on Gawker, brought to our attention the organization Wikileaks, and how the U.S. Government wants to put a serious ass-whipping on them.

Is the U.S. Government Spying on a Tiny Secret-Sharing Website?

Wikileaks.org is a website legendary in certain circles for posting documents people want hidden from the world. The Pentagon is not a fan. Now, Wikileaks is accusing the U.S. of spying on its editors.

[snip]

Wikileaks, which is run by a 9-person advisory board, has built a reputation based on its impressive record of posting secret documents like the ones that threaten the U.S. Army. These include emails hacked from Sarah Palin's private account, 570,000 pager messages from 9/11 and the infamous climate change scientist emails. They have also posted sensitive U.S. military documents—most prominently the standard operating procedures for Guantanamo Bay.

Holy Spooky Shadows Batman!



But wait, there's more!

Glenn Greenwald, today, has some startling info, in his "The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters";

A newly leaked CIA report prepared earlier this month (.pdf) analyzes how the U.S. Government can best manipulate public opinion in Germany and France -- in order to ensure that those countries continue to fight in Afghanistan. The Report celebrates the fact that the governments of those two nations continue to fight the war in defiance of overwhelming public opinion which opposes it -- so much for all the recent veneration of "consent of the governed" -- and it notes that this is possible due to lack of interest among their citizenry: "Public Apathy Enables Leaders to Ignore Voters," proclaims the title of one section.

[snip]

It's both interesting and revealing that the CIA sees Obama as a valuable asset in putting a pretty face on our wars in the eyes of foreign populations. It is odious -- though, of course, completely unsurprising -- that the CIA plots ways to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries in order to sustain support for our wars. Now that this is a Democratic administration doing this and a Democratic war at issue, I doubt many people will object to any of this. But what is worth noting is how and why this classified Report was made publicly available: because it was leaked to and then posted by WikiLeaks.org, the site run by the non-profit group Sunshine Press, that is devoted to exposing suppressed government and corporate corruption by publicizing many of their most closely guarded secrets.

[snip]

If that doesn't sound familiar to Americans, it should. At exactly the time when U.S. government secrecy is at an all-time high, the institutions ostensibly responsible for investigation, oversight and exposure have failed. The American media are largely co-opted, and their few remaining vestiges of real investigative journalism are crippled by financial constraints. The U.S. Congress is almost entirely impotent at providing meaningful oversight and is, in any event, controlled by the factions that maintain virtually complete secrecy. As I've documented before, some alternative means of investigative journalism have arisen -- such as the ACLU's tenacious FOIA litigations to pry documents showing "War on Terror" abuses and the reams of bloggers who sort through, analyze and publicize them -- but that's no match for the vast secrecy powers of the government and private corporations.

Holy Foreign-Policy-Mess-Waiting-To-Happen Batman!

It's almost as if The Bush Grindhouse still has an office putting alongside the new Obama Administration.

Or has the Obama team launched, based on their predecessors model, a new "White House Afghanistan Group"?

Maybe they'll have to dust off Rummy's Propaganda Agency plans to sail past this one

Paging Andy Card!


Bonus CIA Riffs

We Looked In the DIY Section, But Bob Vila Didn't Have A Handbook On It ...

Top Ten Cloves: Things About The New CIA Personality Test

Paid News Scandal Widens; CIA Said To Run Network Of "Blue Hole" Newspapers ...Detainees Forced To Work As Copy Editors Or Write Stories In Isolation; Old Typewriters With No Wite-Out Used

Breaking News! ...Leak of CIA Covert Prison System May Affect IPO, Franchising Rights ...Early Heavy Investment Cools In Wake of Story; North Korea May Trade Nuke Program For Multiple Prisons




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

Obama to impose ban on fishing

By Capt. Fogg

I feel left out. The hysterical e-mails about Obama's latest evil deed usually hit my in-box before Fact Check.org or Urban Legends.com or Snopes.com get around to debunking the latest scoop from the bottomless crock. Surprising indeed since nearly everyone where I live has a boat and loves to fish. Stuart, Florida, where my boat lives is the Sailfish capitol of America. This time I got wind of it before the fishy smell stank up my e-mail client

Obama, you see, wants to ban fishing. That's right, out of pure African-American freedom hating Marxist malice, Opie will have to throw away his bamboo pole and the Cat Fish House on Rte. 1 will have to close and of course we'll believe it because we'll believe anything that feeds our racism and anarchist paranoia. The public has a right to fish, you see, just like I have the right to kill every last damned bird in the federal sanctuary I live next to. The Bible agrees.

The real story of course is that an Obama administration task force charged with developing a comprehensive plan for managing U.S. ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems stopped taking public input so it could prepare its final report. The deadline for writing letters simply ran out. That's right, just like the income tax is pure Marxism ( or Fascism if it suits your particular dementia better, ) scientific fish and wildlife management usually supported by sportsmen, is now a ban on commercial and recreational fishing.

It's all a case of slippery slopes, the fallacy behind virtually all Republican "principle' these days. Adjust the deer hunting season in Georgia, extend the snook season in South Florida and it will inevitably lead to an outright ban and therefore it IS an outright ban regardless of whether we've had such seasons and controls for a hundred years and regardless of the fact that we owe the continued existence of game fish and other wildlife to scientific management.

Will they ever tire of the daily lie? Not until you do.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

The unbearable luxury of Truth

By Capt. Fogg

"...and how much more falsity is still necessary to me that I may therewith always reassure myself regarding the luxury of my truth."

- Friedrich Nietzsche -
________________

Quick, hurry, watch this video right away before "they" pull it. Watch it before "they zap it off the internet" because it's a video of Obama admitting that he grew up with Muslims and is "one of them." Watch carefully and you can see where it was edited. It's the third one in my inbox this week, and the week's not over. Videos about impaling Christian babies on the "Scimitar of Muslim justice." Obama in a Ukrainian porn video -- hurry, before it gets pulled as part of his obvious Marxist agenda! Even a dog knows better than to swallow anything from Obama, but we swallow the slander with infinite glee. In YouTube we trust and ain't it fun to hate Obama?

How many thousands of years ago was it that merely saying President Bush was embarrassing was enough to ruin your career and get you excoriated on Fox News, and reading the names of the fallen in Iraq was an outrageous attempt to criticize the president that bordered on treason? Go back and look -- quickly -- before history is rewritten.

UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. health insurer by market capitalization, posted earnings of $944 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from $726 million in 2008, it was announced this morning. That's a 30% increase -- what recession?

Last week I got a bill for over $700 for some routine blood work. Good thing I can afford Blue Cross at $1500 a month with a $2500 deductible, but still, I pay in far more than I get out of it seeing as that's how private insurance works and how they need to make 30 or 40 percent to keep the stockholders fat. Good thing for UnitedHealth if the Sleaze Lords defeat Obama's Marxist agenda!

America hates the president, America hates the courts, hates the Congress, hates the Government. America doesn't trust science, doesn't trust educated people, doesn't trust liberals. Americans believe they're smart, that their opinions are valid -- their superstitions, their fears, their prejudices and that they're being oppressed by everyone but those who get rich from their suffering. America trusts anonymous e-mails, Rush Limbaugh and YouTube. Americans love comfort, security and luxury, especially if they have more of it than their neighbors. Of course, paying for it with cash is Communism, but what's a little falsity? It's free and abundant -- and it's fun!

(Cross posted from Human Voices.)

Let only one flower bloom

By Capt. Fogg

According to the Foxspeak dictionary, a school of thought is defined as a scheme, usually by Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch that they wish to attribute to a broad segment of the public. People say, or Some people are saying are alternate disguises for propaganda. If there really is a school of thought that believes cutting the minimum wage will be good for workers, I would like to see its accreditation and I suspect it's a school where employers such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart are heavily represented.

"One school of thought says lowering the minimum wage will actually create more jobs,"

pronounced anchortwit Juliet Huddy from the Fox News Podium in an attempt to give credit to the idea if not to the school of one promoting it.

As Raw Story describes in detail, Fox reduces the entire concept of a minimum wage to "social justice" which sounds sufficiently close to Socialism that they deemed it unnecessary to point out any contrary ideas, no matter how credible. Blind slogans and doctrines being so much easier to sell than truth in all its complexity -- or justice for that matter.

At one point I was foolish enough to think that the failure of doctrine driven economic, social and military policies would be an embarrassment to Fox and its friends, but it seems now that with America down and out, the opportunity to kick us while we're down is irresistible. It seems that their dream of building a new, invincible corporate oligarchy from the ruins of our country, is the only school of thought that isn't a strategic fraud.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Fox in the henhouse

By Capt. Fogg  

What the hell Barack Obama was thinking when he appointed Dana Perino to anything at all, I don't know. The Raw Story says, with a bit of mockery, that she's staying true to her convictions but although that sort of thing is so often described as virtue, I have to remember that never changing one's mind and never changing the subject is the mark of the fanatic -- to put it politely. What was he thinking when he appointed a hostile and professional anti-regulatory, anti-government propagandist to the Broadcasting Board of Governors? She may cackle like a biddy, but she's a Fox in the henhouse for sure.

I haven't heard the hortatory "there's a war on" trope for a while now, but here she is again on Fox News trying to use it to generate that same community spirit we had 65 years ago when there really was a war on that had something to do with national security and not another illegitimate, unnecessary and degenerating quagmire having little to do with anything but the ego of a president who never won anything fairly in his life. I have to wonder if the obscenely perky Ms. Perino actually knows enough about WWII to make a valid comparison. You'll remember, of course, that last year as White House deputy press secretary, it came out that she'd never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but with the arrogance only someone with the strength of conviction of the ignorant can have, she's chastising her boss by saying he shouldn't play golf "when there's a war on" and when unemployment is up -- like it was under St. Reagan the Infallible.

He shouldn't keep the generals waiting she says, not remembering that if Kennedy hadn't keep his generals waiting, Florida might still be radioactive. Funny stuff anyway, coming from a mouth that used so recently to tell us not to criticize the president when there's a war on. Disgusting stuff when that particular president set and still holds the U.S. record for number of vacation days taken, morning runs, weeks accumulating into months of brush cutting, and evenings passing out on the couch -- war or no war. Was Obama hoping to plant an ally of some sort in the Fox den? Sorry, you can feed it like a dog, but a Fox is a Fox.

In fact, I think President Obama has already played golf more than President Bush did in eight years. I don't begrudge him for playing golf but you have to understand when you have the B roll of the video that shows the president playing golf while there is a 10.2% unemployment rate, while his senators are basically having to twist arms in order to get this party line vote, while KSM is headed to New York City for trials, while we have the Gitmo detainees possibly coming to Illinois — they have to understand that people could look at that and say, "Oh, and by the way General McChrystal has been waiting 86 days for a decision about Afghanistan."

She twittered to Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends infamy. This, from someone who told us that global warming would be good because fewer people would get colds. No, it was OK for Bush to bicycle, jog, cut brush and pass out in front of the TV while hundreds of thousands died and millions were made homeless, It wasn't golf, that elitist game. It was OK for Ronald to sleep all afternoon when unemployment was 10.5% and there was "a war on" in Granada but Obama should not have a break, or get a break either -- because he's Obama.

For someone who clearly remembers the way the warhawks went after Dwight Eisenhower for dithering and playing golf instead of addressing the missile gap that never really was, it's amusing and infuriating at the same time, since his greatest strength, in my opinion, was his resistance to being rushed or bullied by the generals. It's also amusing to remember that Lyndon Johnson played golf when a far bigger and deadlier war was "on" and you didn't hear much about it from the support-any war-Republicans. All and all, she's just another yipping Fox Friend, with the annoying self confidence of those born yesterday. She belongs with Fox and along with Malkin and Coulter and giggling Glenn, not working for a government she hates.

What the hell was he thinking?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Welcome to the Palin wing of the right-wing insanitarium, Rudy Giuliani

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, like the ex-Speaker of the House, the ex-mayor of New York has backed the ex-governor of Alaska on "death panels," providing yet more high-profile support to one of the key planks of the Republican propaganda effort.

Meanwhile, Palin is still pushing the lie herself.

It'd all be quite funny if so many people weren't actually buying this bullshit.

Despair

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to Rasmussen, voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on health care, 44% to 41%.

I realize that Rasmussen tends to lean right, and so this poll may not accurately reflect reality, but, I must admit, I'm despairing more and more about the state of American democracy.

Part of the problem, in the case of health-care reform, is that the Republican propaganda machine is extremely effective, more so than anything on the Democratic side. Also, Republican activists, as they have been proving from town hall to town hall, are insane and loud and capable, simply by virtue of their screaming, of dominating public discourse -- who can hear the rational when the irrational drowns everything else out?

Part of the problem is also the media, which tend both to regurgitate Republican talking points and to endorse Republican lies simply by given them equal time, without much scrutiny. A Republican asserts that the reform bill includes a provision that would establish "death panels" for the elderly and disabled. A Democrat correctly notes that the bill contains no such provision and that there wouldn't be any "death panels," that the whole thing is just Republican fearmongering. The Republican lies, while the Democrat speaks the truth. But who wins? Surely the Democrat, right? Wrong. Given the media's enforced emphasis on equivalence -- except at Fox News, where the right-wing bias is always on full display -- it's a draw, the lies of the Republican equal in value to the truth of the Democrat. This is how it works. Republican lies are given a platform and legitimated. In the end, the whole arrangement benefits the Republicans, who back up their lies with effective propaganda.

But part of the problem is also the American people, I fear, who are getting what they deserve, which is, even with a Democratic president and Congress, obstructionism to reform at a time when the country -- an economy that can no longer sustain growing health-care burdens, the millions and millions of people without care, without adequate coverage, and without hope -- so desperately needs it. No, not all Americans, of course. So many of them, I know, are fighting the good fight against these Republican (and some Democratic) opponents of reform. But what does it say that, if this poll is to be believed, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on this key issue? Or that so many Americans believe that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. despite the conclusive evidence that he was? Or that the likes of Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber have become national celebrities with massive public support? Or that Fox News is the #1 cable news network? Not good things, I assure you.

No, I know, it isn't fair to blame the American people en masse. It's just frustrating that the Republican narrative is doing so well, that Republican lies have gained such traction with the public. Obama and the Democrats, to be sure, can do better, and they must. But, in a democracy, the people must also take some responsibility, too, and it is essential that they take the time to sift through the spin in order to make rational decisions about their future.

Gingrich backs Palin on "death panel" lie

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As Steve Benen notes, some on the right, like David Brooks (who is known to have a sane moment every now and then), have been critical of Sarah Palin's claim that Obama's proposed health-care system -- "Obamacare," as it has been misleadingly dubbed -- would subject Americans (and specifically the elderly and the disabled) to "death panels," panels of bureaucrats that would supposedly make life-or-death decisions like Roman emperors at some gladiatorial extravaganza.

The facts are the facts, the truth is the truth, and Palin was just lying, spinning fear, like many others on the right. Brooks himself called the claim "crazy." "Maybe, just maybe," Benen writes, "[Palin's] 'death panel' message on Facebook -- complete with lies, poor writing, policy confusion, and family exploitation -- will be enough to convince the skeptical that Palin really is that far gone?" Personally, I doubt it. And I doubt it because Palin isn't alone. There are many who think like her and lie like her, and many more still who credulously accept whatever she and her ilk offer as the truth and nothing but, so "far gone" are they. Besides, Palin's already done more than enough to convince us that she's "that far gone." Those who remain skeptical are the bitter residue of irrationality, and they aren't about to be convinced.

And, indeed, Palin's various backers on the "death panel" lie include not just the usual suspects on Fox News and mobocratic talk radio, as well as in the right-wing blogosphere but a leading Republican and media darling: Newt Gingrich, who, yesterday on ABC's This Week, actually supported Palin's claim. It's hardly news that he's as "far gone" as Palin, and he's long been a leading GOP spinner and propagandist, a partisan who says whatever needs to be said in support of narrow Republican interests regardless of the truth, but it's good to have him confirm like this his place in the Palin wing of the right-wing insanitarium.

It's funny, though. He's a media darling not just because of his past electoral success but because he's convinced enough people, media people, that he's a smart guy, an intellectual conservative, in other words, a rarity that sets him apart. And he often talks a good talk -- consider that he's been a frequent guest on Jon Stewart. And yet his record is quite different than the manufactured image. It's a record of rhetorical insanity suggesting not just a deep reservoir of partisanship -- party before country, party before truth -- but core convictions that are just as insane. This latest foray into the wilderness of delusion and deception only proves the point.

No lie too big, no mind too small

By Capt. Fogg

Get ready for it: another surge in the Anti-Obama wars will be arriving in about a week with a new and more specious attack from the Derangement Rangers, or as these vampires call themselves, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC. Twisting facts and flinging fallacy, they intend to pump up the rage junkies for some purpose we can only imagine and we can be sure that if someone stupid enough to buy their product acts on that rage, they will wash their hands of it and blame the liberals. In fact they're already doing it.

I can say that because the ad will apparently reference the recent intelligence report warning of increased right-wing terrorist activity -- which of course proved true: blood, bullets, bodies, and all -- as an example amongst many, of how Barack Obama is just like Adolf Hitler:

As the regime spun out of control, they labeled political opponents domestic terrorists, and warned of confrontations between such groups and government authorities.

This is their view of an all-too-correct observation. Too damned bad more attention wasn't payed over the howls of offended wingnuts and too damned amazing that they're still howling after the warning was proved accurate.

Of course, it takes a special person to see this alleged spin-out of the administration, but the accusation is quite predictable. Indeed, every accusation made against Bush, no matter how true, is going to be re-labelled and returned in the same fashion as Watergate was reprised in every word and action and relaunched against Bill Clinton:

They proposed a civilian security force, and a Congressman warned it was exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Opposition heightened after voter fraud by the president's allies, including thousands of bogus voter registration [sic].

Since I'm personally involved with civilian security (Amateur Radio Emergency Services), I would have to laugh at a bunch of retired engineers volunteering to do emergency communications in a disaster being compared to Storm Troopers, but it's hard to understand why a thousand or two bad registrations, which don't seem to have produced any actual votes could account for the 9-million-vote Obama victory. Hard, unless you're up to no good yourself, and of course the OCDB PAC is up to just that. It's the illegitimate child of Howard Kaloogian, the fellow who during his losing campaign to replace disgraced Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham told us that Iraq was safe and almost free of violence and that the fact was being hidden by -- you guessed it -- the Liberal Press, which of course supports terrorism. Is there any doubt?

And now the Obama Administration is warning law enforcement to focus their attention on the dangers of conservatives,

says the website. They're not, unless you describe murderers as conservatives, but I am, and I can't help but mention that this kind of rhetoric and this kind of campaign was pioneered by Adolf Hitler himself.

These people are deranged, malignant, well-financed, and well-armed. Oh, yes, and dishonest -- did I mention dishonest?



(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Kiss our American asses, world!

By Capt. Fogg

Apologize for what? asks the e-mail. What follows is a sequence of pictures of US military cemeteries in Europe all entitled "We apologize." It ends with:

Apologize to no one. Remind those of our sacrifice and don't confuse arrogance with leadership. And we have to watch an American elected leader who apologizes to Europe and the Middle East that our country is "arrogant"! HOW MANY FRENCH, DUTCH, ITALIANS, BELGIANS AND BRITS ARE BURIED ON OUR SOIL, DEFENDING US AGAINST OUR ENEMIES?? WE DON'T ASK FOR PRAISE ... BUT WE HAVE ABSOULUTELY [sic] NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE!!

No, it's not just the typical American arrogance about the world needing to kiss our feet every day. It's not just an illustration of our stunning ignorance of history, it's just another rabble rousing attack on a president who had the honesty to say that we have often of late been perceived as arrogant and we've often been unfair to those who disagree and that others have likewise been unfair to us. It's actually one of the best things Obama has said, in my opinion, and they're not going to let him get way with such heresy; not while there remains one pitchfork-wielding and furiously ignorant psycho-patriot to arouse.

(More at Human Voices.)

The most ____ president in history

By Capt. Fogg

"Be warned - - Obama has started!!!!" screams the e-mail.

The boundary between hyperbole and hysteria may be blurry and undefined, but those who make a career of ferrying the lost souls across that murky river are calm, cool and professional and know just what they are doing: delivering us all to hell.

The smallest and most obscure incident will be elevated to a breathless diatribe against the pandaemon of targets in the Republican shooting gallery and so when, after a series of accidents, one fatal, involving Fort Campbell soldiers owning private firearms and living off-base, approximately 110 out of 29,000 of them were asked by a company commander for information about what kind of weapons they owned, with the objective of providing proper training in their use. The letter was rescinded almost immediately.

With blinding speed the letter was scanned and embedded in a bogus and highly irate letter about how "the most anti-firearm president in history" was trying to disarm our own military:

The big hush, hush is not only to take away our missile defenses, but Obama is going to disarm the public as well. He is starting with the military and then the public. The country will then be totally defenseless.

How quickly we move from memo to madness. It goes on and on about Liberty and a "Free people" and how "something really nasty is blowing in the wind here." Indeed it is, or at least in the electronic wind and it smells Republican.

It just seems a little coincidental to me that within 90 days: the most anti-firearm President in history is inaugurated, some of the nastiest anti-firearm laws are put on the table in Washington.

Do I need to point out that to be a coincidence, two events have to be true?

I could almost hear the thud of it arriving in my in-box -- or perhaps the thud was the sonic boom caused by the Commander of Charlie Company transmogrifying into maniacal Barack Obama.

Obama, formerly "the most far-left Liberal" in the Senate is now confounding the Liberal wing of his party with his decidedly not far-left Liberal views on many things, but no matter. Even if he proves not to put further gun control legislation on the table, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Rahm Immanuel are waiting, like cartridges in a magazine and any one of them can be the next "most ____ in history." Like Lego blocks, they're interchangeable.

Now I wonder with what blinding speed some troll will decide that I am very angry and therefore demented and from that go on to point out that all Democrats are not only hate filled, but deranged hate mongers; perhaps the most deranged in history. I'm counting the seconds.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Fox Nation - are you man enough?

by Capt. Fogg

Fox Nation -- do you have the stomach for it?

"It's Time to Say NO to Biased Media and Say YES to Fair Play and Free Speech."

is the curtain from behind which they spew out biased interpretations as freely as Fox News ever did. Fox Nation is a month old "Conservative opinion" site that is by their own description " for those opposed to intolerance," and of course intolerance means that gagging sound one makes when trying to swallow the allegedly conservative outrages against the misrepresentations they perpetrate -- just like Fox News itself.

"Why aren't white males being considered for the Supreme Court?"

asks this fine publication today. Of course the court always has been and still remains mostly white male, but it's good for readership to get the skinheads and Aryan nation idiots in an uproar about their being persecuted. I really don't have the stomach for it, but I'm sure they're opposing intolerance here in some obscure fashion.

"attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought [and] expression,"

are what they oppose as long as those thoughts don't include any objection to pointing an M1 Garand military rifle at Barak Obama and Jesse Jackson.
Coincidence? Only their psychiatrist knows for sure. Of course I've been thoroughly excoriated on right wing sites for suggesting that "heads should roll" in the hate radio business and it was interpreted in fair and balanced fashion that I was calling for themurder and ritual decapitation of Rush Limbaugh, so I really don't feel any inhibition in asking whether this is a subliminal thing, meant to make the bigots giggle and their trigger fingers wiggle or pure accident. It could be that, certainly and I'm being fair and balanced about it.

Cross posted from (fair and balanced) Human Voices

Craziest Newspaper of the Day: Orange County Register (for global warming denialism)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, global warming denialism is alive and well in the OC, and specifically at its main newspaper, The Orange County Register, where, yesterday, the editors of that right-wing rag editorialized that carbon dioxide limits are, and I quote, "unneeded, unjust."

What, you ask? Isn't almost the entirety of the scientific community -- and, certainly, virtually all of the scientific community that deals with reality -- convinced by the evidence that carbon dioxide emissions are behind global warming? Yes, that's true. But the editors of the OCR have no time for science, or reality, or the truth, given that they're all about right-wing ideology and propaganda:

There's no evidence man-made CO2, even if it increases temperatures, is harmful. Indeed, some argue that warmer climes would benefit mankind by increasing crop productivity and reducing deaths from severe cold. None of that matters when government is intent on forcing change.

No evidence? Really? And who are these "some" who "argue" that warming would actually be beneficial? More crops and fewer deaths? That may be one of the stupidest arguments ever, denialism at its most insane. There is simply nothing to it. Global warming is already changing the world in profound ways -- and not in good ones, as, among others, Elizabeth Kolbert showed in her wonderful book Field Notes from a Catastrophe. And -- yes, let me go all-caps on this -- EVEN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ADMITTED THAT CO2 EMISSIONS FROM HUMAN ACTIVITY ARE WARMING THE ATMOSPHERE. Well, sort of. It commissioned a study that arrived at that pretty obvious conclusion.

Would some people like some warmer temperatures. Sure. But, again, how utterly ridiculous is that? The regions of the world near the equator would heat up and dry out to unlivable extremes. The seas would rise, threatening millions and millions of people who live near the sea, especially in extremely poor parts of the world. And so on... and so on...

There is even the possibility, as I mentioned back in October 2007, that changes to the earth's hydrologic cycle, including to the so-called Ocean Conveyor, which regulates the Gulf Stream, the flow of warm water up into the North Atlantic, could have disastrous consequences. If the Conveyor slows down significantly as a result of more and more fresh water coming down from the north, as Arctic ice melts, temperatures would cool significantly in Europe and elsewhere in the region, and, more dramatically, much of the Northern Hemisphere could be plunged back into another ice age. Researchers have already discovered remarkable changes in oceanic salinity levels. It is real. It is happening."

No matter, though, such reality-based developments apparently don't register in the OC. (Sorry, had to do it.)

It almost makes me welcome the death of the newspaper industry. (Seriously, a fine publication like The Boston Globe is in danger while a right-wing rag like the OCR pumps out this shit? What a crazy, fucked-up, warming-to-the-point of apocalyptic catastrophe we live in.)

Selling the stimulus: How Republican propaganda is dominating the narrative, and what Democrats need to do to fight back

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Earlier today, Creature noted that public support for the current economic stimulus plan has fallen to 37 percent, attributing this decline to "the failure of Democrats to get their message out." Ryan Avent, linking to Steve Benen, makes the same point over at Yglesias's place: "[C]onservatives are winning the public relations battle, and as a result, public support for stimulus is falling."

I agree with this assessment. As bad as things are out there -- as many jobs as are being lost, as many homes as are being foreclosed on, as bleak as the present seems and as even worse as the future is expected to be, that is, as historically terrible as the state of the economy really is -- it is the opponents of the stimulus plan, and by that I mean, of course, the extremist conservative ideologues of the Republican Party, are dominating the narrative and dictating the terms of the debate, with a gullible media establishment playing right along, dutifully reporting on how bad things are out there even as it wallows in and magnifies the manufactured sensationalism of political conflict in Washington.

The media establishment and its predictable pandering to the right aside, though, these Republicans are just doing what they have to do, or what they think they have to do, for partisan political gain. You can't fault an animal for doing what it is in its nature to do, and that goes for political animals as well. Republicans are being Republicans, and the media are being the media. The problem is that the Democrats are also being the Democrats, which, lest we forget, means not effectively standing up for themselves and countering Republican propaganda with their own direct appeals to the American people. Just as the Republicans dominated (and won) the national conversation on the war on terror and the Iraq War, such as there was one, so are they now dominating the national conversation on the stimulus plan, winning the political game and driving down popular support for something the economy and the people so badly need.

Thankfully, as Benen points out, the plan's proponents are finally waking up, or at least showing signs of pushing back against the tsunami of right-wing spin. They're getting to it late, but better late than never, not least with the plan now in the Senate, where apparently the Democrats don't have enough votes to pass it in its current form -- and where even moderate Republicans are trying to cut what is already too small a plan to do what is necessary for the economy.

The apparent lack of public support for the plan is worrisome, but, as Nate Silver finds (via Alex Koppelman, with a Democratic source who contends that "the bill is still likely to pass the Senate in time for Congress to send it to President Obama to sign before Presidents' Day"), examining not one but several polls, there is actually "little evidence that it is unpopular in the here and now." The problem, of course, is that the plan is complicated, not to mention expensive, and, as Silver notes, "a figure like $800 billion is never going to be an easy sell." This is what allows the Republicans, with their typically effective spin machine, to gain the upper hand. They can scare people with the sheer magnitude of the plan while also picking out parts of it that may generate additional opposition, all the while putting the blame not on those who, in Creature's words, "drove this country into the ditch," but rather on Obama and the Democrats, on those who are actually trying to do something constructive to get the country out of the mess it's in.

The bipartisan route has been taken, and Republicans have responded by voting in unison against the plan in the House, by seeking to shrink it in the Senate, and by waging an all-out public relations war for pure partisan gain. It is time, long past time, for Obama and the Democrats to fight back and to do what is right for the country. To do any less is to let the Republicans get away with continuing their long history of harming both the economy and the American people, and to fail to do what is necessary at this moment of crisis.

**********

For more on this, and on what Obama needs to do, see Michael Hirsh at Newsweek:

The reason Obama is getting so few votes is that he is no longer setting the terms of the debate over how to save the economy. Instead the Republican Party — the one we thought lost the election — is doing that. And the confusion and delay this is causing could realize Obama's worst fears, turning "crisis into a catastrophe," as the president said Wednesday.

Obama's desire to begin a "post-partisan" era may have backfired. In his eagerness to accommodate Republicans and listen to their ideas over the past week, he has allowed the GOP to turn the haggling over the stimulus package into a decidedly stale, Republican-style debate over pork, waste and overspending. This makes very little economic sense when you are in a major recession that only gets worse day by day. Yes, there are still some very legitimate issues with a bill that's supposed to be "temporary" and "targeted" — among them, large increases in permanent entitlement spending, and a paucity of tax cuts that will prompt immediate spending. Even so, Obama has allowed Congress to grow embroiled in nitpicking over efficiency when the central debate should be about whether the package is big enough. When you are dealing with a stimulus of this size, there are going to be wasteful expenditures and boondoggles. There's no way anyone can spend $800 to $900 billion quickly without waste and boondoggles. It comes with the Keynesian territory. This is an emergency; the normal rules do not apply.

But the public isn't hearing about that all-important distinction right now. And by the time Obama signs a bill — if he can get one approved — many Americans may have concluded that the GOP is right and that the Democrats have embarked on another spending spree, as if this were just another wearying Washington debate.

Thankfully, Obama has begun to fight back. He can win this. He just needs to get out there, make his case, and rally his party behind him.