November 18, 2011

Let's Just Lie

Over at Smoking Politics: Let’s Just Lie — ‘Occupy Shooter’ | Smoking Politics

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 9, 2011

Latest Right-Wing Lie

Over at Smoking Politics I write about The ‘Christmas Tree Tax’ Lie.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:39 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 1, 2011

The Herman Cain Sexual Harassment Accusation

This post originally appeared at Smoking Politics.

Politico has revealed allegations that Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain, the front-runner in the Republican Presidential primaries, was accused of sexual harassment in the late 90s and that his employer, the National Restaurant Association, settled the charges with a cash payout. His explanation is that he made a certain gesture and said his wife is "this tall," and was sued for a lot of money.

My take on it: I don't see it. Unless something else comes up I have not heard enough evidence to make me question Cain's character -- on this issue. (His 9-9-9 plan is a whole different story.) I haven't heard of anything that might indicate a pattern. I don't even think it looks bad that this was settled. I think the Association would have settled rather than fight the charges because that saves a great deal of money, even if Cain was innocent, so settling, to me, is not evidence of guilt. I've run a company, people sue you when you run a company or an association or other organization. (My own policy was never settle, and that ended up costing me a great deal of money going to court and winning.) They say something happened at an event "at a hotel." It sounds bad that it happened at an event at a hotel, but this was the Restaurant Association and they do all kinds of events at hotels. And here is the main thing: there are two major Presidential campaigns that have very good reason to make Cain look bad. So I am withholding judgement.

Where Did It Come From?

This story likely came from either Rick Perry or Mitt Romney's campaign, in my opinion. Cain is the front-runner in the polls, Perry and Romney believe they are entitled to be the candidate, they feel Cain is a distraction from the "serious people's" race and they really, really want Cain out of the way so they can get at tearing each other up instead. Of course one of them set this up.

This is not a particularly bad thing. A Presidential candidate needs to be able to field this kind of thing. It's part of the screening, part of the landscape of this. A President is going to be accused of things; do we want a President who flubs it when accused of things he or she actually didn't do? No, we want to know that a President can get distractions out of the way. (We also want to know if the candidate really does have a character flaw, like I said I am withholding judgement until I see more to go on.)

Is This A Smear?

Do the accusations rise to the level of a smear, like the Swift Boat attack on Kerry, or the various attacks on Gore and Obama? I don't classify this as a smear, I'd call it typical campaign stuff. Seriously, it is just a media outlet reporting some facts. There is no echo chamber primed to amplify it, no larger narrative that it is intended to reinforce. I would say that a smear -- the kind we fight here at Smoking Politics -- is a false charge designed to fit into a larger narrative that is part of an ideological strategy. This is just a news report about something that did happen -- the accusation and settlement. It is not structured around a narrative about Cain, it's just a typical campaign hit to try to knock him out of the primary. Just no big deal, let's see how well Cain handles it.

Bigger Picture -- The Narrative

So on to the bigger picture of how these stories affect campaigns and our politics, which is what Smoking Politics is about. How should we react to this story? And how is it being used? Specifically, what narrative, or propaganda point, is the being driven with the story?

The movement right sees an opportunity to use this to further their anti-"liberal" propaganda narrative. (That's who they are, that's what they do.) They are charging that this is an example of "liberals" attacking a conservative. They are saying Cain is a victim of liberal attacks. Heh.

Rush Limbaugh says this is the "mainstream media" attacking a conservative, and adds a racial element. (Because that's what he does.) From the transcript: We Should Not be Surprised by the Left's Racist Hit Job on Herman Cain.

"Look at how quickly what is known as the mainstream media goes for the ugliest racial stereotypes they can to attack a black conservative. ... The racial stereotypes that these people are using to go after Herman Cain, what is the one thing that it tells us? It tells us who the real racists are, yeah, but it tells us that Herman Cain is somebody. Something's going on out there. Herman Cain obviously is making some people nervous for this kind of thing to happen.

[. . .] We cannot have a black Republican running for the office of president. We can't have one elected. We can't have an Hispanic. The left owns those two groups, and those two groups are gonna forever be minorities. Those groups cannot ever be seen to be self-sufficient or rising above, on their own. Those two groups are owned -- lock, stock, and barrel -- by the Democrat Party and anything good that happens to any black or Hispanic in American politics can only happen via the Democrat Party. "If it happens elsewhere, we're gonna destroy those people -- a la Clarence Thomas."

The poisonous Ann Coulter says it is "liberals" doing this. She told - who else - Fox News,

“It’s outrageous the way liberals treat a black conservative,” she told Geraldo. “This is another high-tech lynching. … Nothing liberals fear more than a black conservative."

Liberals?

Please, one thing that Democrats want more than anything is for Cain to be the candidate. And calling Politico a liberal, mainstream media outlet? It's not for nothing that bloggers call it "Drudgico."

How To React?

This sort of thing happens in campaigns -- and it should. Like I said, it's just a news report about an accusation and settlement from a long time ago. It gives us a chance to learn about Cain. It gives Cain a chance to show us how he handles things. It isn't a smear, it's a news report about something that happened. We'll see how he does.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:35 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 17, 2011

Republicans Say Unemployed Are "Slackers"

Seriously, see for yourself: Rep. Steve King: Unemployment Benefits Have Created "A Nation Of Slackers"

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 16, 2011

Top 5 List: 5 Biggest Right-Wing Lies About Solyndra

Oil-backed conservatives have been absolutely ecstatic over the collapse of American solar-power company Solyndra and the rise of China as the dominant country in green energy, because they think they can turn this into a story that makes President Obama and government look bad. It also gives them a bonus opportunity to attack alternatives to coal and oil. So is there really a "scandal" behind what happened to Solyndra? Or is this just one more conservative smear, made up from whole cloth and spread around conservative outlets, talk radio and FOX News, hoping the "mainstream media" will be tricked into propelling the propaganda out to the public?

The Smear Machine

When Bill Clinton was President conservatives developed and refined a "smear machine" technique of making up accusation after accusation after accusation (after accusation after accusation), repeating them endlessly and hysterically in conservative-funded outlets, and working to get major media outlets to pick up and repeat them. Unfortunately they were often successful at driving phony smears into the public arena. Even though the stories were invariably refuted after investigation, by the time each smear was refuted many, many more were circulating. After a while people began to believe "where there's smoke there's fire." One such story that major outlets repeated involved the supposed "sale" of an Arlington cemetery plot for campaign contributions. When it was proven to be nothing more than a false smear the repetition in major outlets was justified "because it's just the sort of thing he might have done."

In the 2004 election we saw the process repeated with the "Swift Boat" smear that turned around John Kerry's lead in the polls. It was entirely a made-up lie but the mainstream media picked it up and propelled it.

Since President Obama's election right-wing media outlets have again been engaged in creating a constant stream of negative and destructive "stories" that try to turn the public against the President, Democrats in general and government itself. We have been told that the President is secretly a Muslim terrorist, was not born in the United States and therefore is an illegitimate President and is a "Socialist" out to destroy our way of life. They have claimed he raised taxes when in reality he cut taxes, that he "tripled the deficit" when in reality he cut the deficit from the $1.4 trillion hole Bush left us in, that his stimulus plan "created zero jobs" when in reality it turned around a rapidly-deteriorating situation, that he has dramatically increased spending when in reality he did not, and many other untruths all in an attempt to turn people against him and against the idea that government can be a force for good. (See Three Charts To Email To Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law.) Accusation after accusation has been shot down.

The Top Five Lies

Now they're at it again, this time trying to turn the unfortunate bankruptcy of a solar-power company named Solyndra into an all-out anti-Obama and anti-government attack. Here is a countdown of the top five lies they are telling about what happened with Solyndra:

5) The biggest investor in Solyndra was an Obama donor. Conservatives (and now picked up by corporate "mainstream" outlets) make the accusation that there was corruption in the process by which Solyndra received its loan because a major Obama donor named George Kaiser is a major investor in Solyndra. The charge is that Solyndra only received the loan guarantee as a result of campaign contributions by people "connected to" Solyndra. The problem with this is that George Kaiser was not an investor in Solyndra. According to Tulsa World,

In an emailed statement to the Tulsa World, a representative of the George Kaiser Family Foundation said the organization made the investment through Argonaut.

"George Kaiser is not an investor in Solyndra and did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan," the statement said. "GKFF invests in a globally diversified portfolio across many different asset classes."

The Kaiser Family Foundation is a philanthropic organization, which means Kaiser (or anyone else) could not personally profit from a successful investment by the foundation.

4) Green energy is a bad investment. Oil-connected conservatives have been trying to kill off investment in green energy for some time. They see opportunity in hyping up a "scandal" over the bankruptcy of Solyndra as a way to attack the idea of developing a green-energy industry in the US. Just today, Heritage Foundation, which for months has been attacking the idea of creating green jobs, has this posted: Solyndra Scandal Ends Green Jobs Myth. (I have several examples of conservative attacks on green manufacturing in the post, The Phony Solyndra Solar Scandal.)

Just in the last year China gave $30 billion financing to 6 solar companies. If the benefits from developing a green energy industry that provides lots of green jobs are a myth then why is China putting so much into this effort?

3) The government lost money "picking winners and losers." This is a core line of attack by the right. By tricking the public into thinking that the purpose of government's efforts to trigger a green-energy industry was to make money for the government by investing in individual companies, they can make this look bad because one company went into bankruptcy. But the purpose of our government's involvement in this is to help trigger an ecosystem around which a green-energy industry can grow. When a new technology is promising, it might be risky to investors, but very beneficial to us as a country to pursue it. That way we end up with a chunk of the millions of jobs and trillions of dollars that result. That benefits everyone.

The government does not operate like a venture capitalist, investing in companies with the hope of reaping a profit for itself. Compare the effort to trigger a green-energy industry to government-funded cancer research. Some directions of exploration don’t pan out. But you don’t know that until you fund the tests. This is what happened with Solyndra. The loan guarantee enabled Solyndra to get private investment hire researchers as well as manufacturing and other employees, to build a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in the US, to develop a supply chain, to buy equipment, etc. This was part of the stimulus and all that money was moved into the economy. And all of those are still in the United States, ready to be part of scaling up a green-energy industry. So where the country is concerned, we didn’t lose at all.

The goal was not to make Solyndra a successful company, the goal was to trigger an ecosystem for the green-energy industry in the US. Weren't the things the money was used for, good for the country? Even though the company Solyndra didn’t make it, the money created jobs and leaves behind technology, trained workrs, equipment and facilities that other companies will use.

2) The Solyndra loan was rushed or pushed. This loan originated under the Bush administration -- and for good reasons. Following the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the government began efforts to cultivate a US-based green-energy industry. Solyndra offered a promising technology and applied for loan guarantees. Following a review by career professionals in the Department of Energy (DOE) Solyndra was asked to provide more information. A few months later, under the new Obama administration, the same career professionals received the requested information and proceeded to approve the loan.

They DOE had some conditions, and a few months later those conditions were met, and the timeline of meeting the conditions meant it happened under the new administration but was handled by the same career professionals. It was the right thing to do for the country to suggest the loan under the Bush administration, which did nothing wrong. Approving the loan under the Obama administration also helps the country because that money went toward helping develop that ecosystem that creates companies and jobs. Stories about rushing the approval are meant to make it sound like it was done to help a major campaign donor who, as point #1 above makes clear, was not the investor. It is the only reason the timing is an issue.

The Number One Lie

And the number 1 lie told by conservatives is:

1) Something bad happened. The right has been trying to push the idea that something bad has happened involving Solyndra. They are calling it a "scandal." But it is entirely a manufactured scandal, like those from the Clinton era. This is what they do. Nothing bad happened.

The supposed campaign donor/investor is not an investor. The timing of the loan is not suspect, it followed the proper, transparent, accountable procedures. The loan assisted the development of a promising technology. The green-energy industry stands to create millions of jobs and trillions of dollars to the countries that are smart enough now to make the investments that help them grab a chunk of it. The loan was good for the country, even though one company went bankrupt.

But by the time this smear is refuted five more will have taken its place.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Sign up here for the CAF daily summary.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 14, 2011

The Phony Solyndra Solar Scandal

Well here's a surprise: conservatives and oil interests are pushing deceptive and destructive stories about President Obama and clean energy. Imagine that! Their intent (as always) is to turn people against President Obama, clean energy, national energy policy, stimulus to help the economy, and government in general. It's what they do. Here is some information to help you push back on the latest whipped-up, anti-green, anti-government, anti-Obama "scandal."

Solyndra

Solyndra was a startup solar-power equipment manufacturer based in Fremont, California that went bankrupt at the end of August. The company's solar collectors used a special tubular internal design that let it collect light from all directions, and were made with a copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) thin film that avoided using then-expensive silicon. It was one of several companies that received assistance from the government, in an attempt to push back on China's strategic targeting of green-energy manufacturing.

The company, partly backed by the conservative Walton family had received a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. The loan, which was originally pushed by the Bush administration, was 1.3% of the DOE portfolio.

The economy tanked and cut demand, and at the same time Solyndra could not compete with subsidized companies located in China as they rapidly scaled up. So Solyndra ran out of money. Conservatives and oil interests are using the bankruptcy as a platform to attack green energy and the idea of green jobs in general, solar power in particular, President Obama as always, stimulus funding and the idea of developing a national strategic industrial policy to push back on China and others who have their own national policies to win this key industry of the future.

Conservative Attacks

Conservative are accusing the Obama administration of corruption in choosing Solyndra to receive a government loan guarantee. The typical conservative-outlet story follows a template of Glenn-Beckian accusations that someone "connected to" Obama has "ties" to something. When you hear the phrasing "has ties to" you should understand this as code-speak for "has nothing to do with but can be made to appear to have some sinister involvement if you twist the wording a certain way."

Example template story: Bankrupt solar company with fed backing has cozy ties to Obama admin,

A solar energy company that intends to file for bankruptcy received $535 million in backing from the federal government and has a cozy history with Democrats and the Obama administration, campaign finance records show.

Shareholders and executives of Solyndra, a green energy company producing solar panels, fundraised for and donated to the Obama administration to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a key Obama backer who raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the president’s election campaign, is one of Solyndra’s primary investors. Kaiser himself donated $53,500 to Obama’s 2008 election campaign, split between the DSCC and Obama For America. Kaiser also made several visits to the White House and appeared at some White House events next to Obama officials.

Campaign finance records show Kaiser and Solyndra executives and board members donated $87,050 total to Obama’s election campaign.

And now, just two years after securing a half-billion-dollar federal loan, Solyndra has said that it will declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

(Hold on to this part about Tulsa billionaire Kaiser as an investor for later.)

Another: Big Government, Sweethearts: Bankrupt Solar Power Firm Well Connected to White House, "Obama’s stimulus money handouts carry the stench of political favoritism."

Another: Hot Air: How did Solyndra get a sweetheart interest rate?

FOX News has been promoting this "scandal" story heavily. (It should be noted here that Fox's parent company News Corp's 2nd-largest shareholder is oil billionaire Saudi Prince al-Waleed - an "oil interest" if ever there was one.) For example, FOX News, a template story with the ever-hopeful conservative headline: Obama's Pet Billionaire at Solyndra May Take White House Down,

A high profile, politically well-connected California solar energy company that had won a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama Administration declared bankruptcy earlier this month and closed its doors sending 1100 workers to the unemployment line. The demise of Solyndra has already sparked an FBI investigation, congressional hearings, and raised numerous questions of political cronyism and corruption connected to the highest levels of the Obama Administration.

... One of the company's largest investors, George B. Kaiser of Tulsa, reportedly contributed $53,500 personally and bundled large amounts more for Obama in 2008. Kaiser is a billionaire with banking and oil and gas interests that rank him among the wealthiest people in the world. Kaiser also visited the White House 16 times between 2009 and 2011.

FOX News: RNC Uses Solyndra Investigation to Question New White House Jobs Proposal

FOX News: Could Solyndra Probe Mean Legal Trouble for White House?

FOX News: House GOP Widens Scope of Solyndra Investigation.

Etc., the story is repeated with various twists and added allegations throughout the conservative misinformation engine.

Jumps To "Mainstream"

As so often happens with the conservative machine, the story as spun by the right is jumping to "mainstream" news outlets. For example, this ABC story by Mathew Mosk, formerly of the Washington Times, and others, Emails: Obama White House Monitored Huge Loan to 'Connected' Firm pushes the conservative line, calling the firm "politically connected" and, reminiscent of Clinton-era Whitewater reporting, uses "investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee" -- in other words, conservative operatives -- as a source. The story claims the White House "closely monitored" Solyndra but offers no evidence of "close monitoring," says the company is the "subject of a criminal investigation" without explaining that the investigation is into whether the company misled the government about its financial status which would mean that administration officials did not knowingly provide a loan to a failing company, claims that a prominent Obama donor is "an investor" even though the donor's family foundation is the investor, which means the donor had nothing to gain, and to further the appearance of a sinister scheme by the Obama administration to hand money to political allies leaves out the financial involvement of the conservative Walton family. From ABC,

Newly uncovered emails show the White House closely monitored the Energy Department's deliberations over a $535 million government loan to Solyndra, the politically-connected solar energy firm that recently went bankrupt and is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

The company's solar panel factory was heralded as a centerpiece of the president's green energy plan -- billed as a way to jump start a promising new industry. And internal emails uncovered by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee that were shared exclusively with ABC News show the Obama administration was keenly monitoring the progress of the loan, even as analysts were voicing serious concerns about the risk involved.

Background Of Corruption Allegations

Before looking at whether the Obama administration really had "ties to" people who had "ties to" Solyndra who somehow "benefited from" government loan guarantees, let's have a bit of a refresher on our recent history.

Under President Bush, conservative movement partners as well as companies and people with financial ties to Bush administration figures regularly received lucrative contracts under less-than-transparent circumstances that had every direct appearance of (forget "ties to") of corruption and cronyism. For example, Koch Submits Winning Bid To Supply Additional Oil to Strategic Reserve,

Koch Supply & Trading, LP, one of the world's largest crude oil trading companies, will become the newest supplier of crude oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) under President Bush's plan, announced last November, to fill the nation's emergency oil stockpile to its full capacity by 2005.

Example, Fired Army Whistleblower Receives $970K for Exposing Halliburton No-Bid Contract in Iraq,

Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, the former chief oversight official of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, has reached a $970,000 settlement six years after she was demoted for publicly criticizing a multi-billion-dollar, no-bid contract to Halliburton—the company formerly headed by then-Vice President Dick Cheney. Greenhouse had accused the Pentagon of unfairly awarding the contract to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. Testifying before Congress in June 2005, she called the contract the worst case of government abuse she had ever witnessed in her 20-year career.

Example, Bush's Housing Secretary was caught awarding contracts based on party affiliation: Probe Finds Jackson Urged Favoritism in HUD Contracts,

An inspector general's report charges that top U.S. housing official Alphonso Jackson urged staff members to favor friends of President Bush when awarding Department of Housing and Urban Development contracts.

Attacking Green Manufacturing

The Solyndra accusations are really just one part of an ongoing conservative and oil-interests-funded anti-green-manufacturing campaign drumbeat. Long before Solyndra's bankruptcy the Heritage Foundation was running stories like 2008's Green Jobs Are Con Jobs, 2009's The Green Job Myth Exposed, and this year's Obama’s “Green Jobs” Pipe Dream, The Green Jobs Story Obama Doesn’t Want You to Hear, Are “Green Jobs” the Answer?, Are Green Jobs ‘Gone with the Wind’?...

Media Matters had previously exposed the nature of this ongoing effort, in Heritage Foundation Green Jobs Panel - Bought and Paid For By ExxonMobil,

Instead of showcasing the views of unbiased academics and economists, the Heritage Foundation put forth a panel of individuals financially connected to ExxonMobil.

... The ENTIRE PANEL Received Money From ExxonMobil.

More conservative-outlet examples include the ever-malignant Fox News: Solyndra Investigation Begins Critical Look at Federally Funded Green Ventures.

Other conservative outlets continue the drumbeat, Obama’s green dream hurting U.S. taxpayers by Linda Chavez.

Another: Obama Green Jobs Con Job and the Ill Wind That Blows from Spain,

Obama has become tiresome. He is over-exposed. He has overstayed his welcome. We can hear the clichés that will be laced through his speech even before he speaks -- the opposite of an echo. The promises will be there -- what else can he sell? Certainly not his record on the economy.

He has always been a snake oil salesman; such people always tempt the needy with promises of great things to come. So we will once more hear him tout his policies as creating legions of new "green jobs" while making America the world leader in green energy. We have heard it before. He must either think we are stuck on stupid or he is the one stuck on stupid. This policy has clearly been one giant Green Jobs Con Job.

Another: Reason: Obama's Green Jobs Failures and Obama's Green-Jobs Fantasy and The Green Jobs Delusion and The Unseen Consequences of "Green Jobs": Will investing in clean energy harm the economy?...

NewsMax: Green Jobs Spending Is a Waste of Greenbacks, "If the congressional “supercommittee” wants to cut wasteful spending, the green-jobs agenda is a great place to start."

And more and more and more and more...

What Really Happened

A very good summary of the whole story, as well as a look into the details of the investment can be found in the Time/Swampland Michael Grunwald story, Big Name Investors Behind Obama’s Failed Green Tech Bet First in Line to Recoup Losses, summary: (read the whole thing)

This is sure to play out as a scandal, but based on what we know so far, it shouldn’t be. Private loans go south all the time. ... The Obama administration has made bets on hundreds of clean-energy companies in dozens of clean-energy sectors; some of those bets in its portfolio are bound to go bad, just as Richard Branson picks an occasional lemon. It’s legitimate to question whether the government should have made this particular bet, or whether it overplayed a weak hand, or whether it should be making bets in the first place. But if we’re going to have a clean energy industry in this country, this kind of thing is going to happen. It doesn’t mean anyone cheated.

Background of the company's failure, from the Swampland piece,

Solyndra’s loan, the first approved under a clean-energy program that was launched during the Bush administration and expanded by Obama’s stimulus bill, was supposed to finance a new state-of-the-art factory for the company’s unique cylindrical solar cells. At the time, Solyndra was an exciting startup; according to the public filings, it attracted big money from bigtime financiers, including $35 million from Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Fund, $57 million from U.S. Venture Partners, and even $2 million from affiliates of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

... [later] The biggest problem was obvious; in an industry where prices were plummeting, Solyndra’s product was too expensive. It desperately needed to finish its new factory, which would increase volume and decrease costs. And it needed more sales.

By last November, the company was running out of cash; according to a January 2011 government document, it had “a very high probability” of bankruptcy and liquidation. This was a big problem, not only because the company had drawn down $460 million of its loan, but because its new factory wasn’t even completed, which meant liquidation would be a fire sale. ...

The other option was restructuring. Kaiser’s Argonaut Ventures and the Walton family’s Madrone Partners would put up an additional $75 million, which would take the first position in case of a liquidation; the government would still be paid first if the company managed to emerge from bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy ... ultimately concluded it did have a potentially viable business. The new factory was on time and on budget. Sales were increasing steadily. And even if Solyndra failed, it would be much more valuable with a completed high-tech plant than with an empty box in Fremont, California.

... “The restructuring gave Solyndra a fighting chance for success,” that same official says. “But then everything fell off a cliff.”

In the summer of 2011, solar panel prices plummeted again. The investors had been poised to inject another $75 million, but this time, they decided not to throw good money after bad. Solyndra shut down and laid off its 1,100 employees.

Investors

The conservatives make the accusation that an Obama donor named George Kaiser is a major investor in Solyndra, and Solyndra received the loan guarantee as a result of Kaiser's (and others) campaign contributions, in order to personally profit. The problem with this is that George Kaiser was not an investor in Solyndra, the Kaiser Family Foundation was. According to Tulsa World,

In an emailed statement to the Tulsa World, a representative of the George Kaiser Family Foundation said the organization made the investment through Argonaut.

"George Kaiser is not an investor in Solyndra and did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan," the statement said. "GKFF invests in a globally diversified portfolio across many different asset classes."

The Kaiser Family Foundation is a philanthropic organization, which means Kaiser (or anyone else) could not personally profit from a successful investment by the foundation. One of the areas of focus of the foundation is the National Energy Policy Institute, so Solyndra was a natural investment for the Foundation:

National Energy Policy Institute (NEPI) is a GKFF effort to establish a rational energy policy that will effectively reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. American political leaders have espoused energy independence for decades. NEPI's goal is to move beyond total oil dependence and to supplant consumption of imported oil through increased domestic energy supply, reduced foreign oil and gas demand and lower carbon emissions to include enhancement of traditional sources of domestic oil, gas and coal.

The conservative Wal-Mart Walton Family, however, were private investors through their Madrone Capital, and at the time that the Bush administration started pushing the Solyndra loan were in a position to peronally profit from this investment. If any accusation of an expectation of personal enrichment obtained from political connections should be investigated, it is this one. Will the Republican House look into the connections between the Walton family and Bush administration officials, and the Bush administrations efforts to provide loans to Solyndra?

The Government Didn't Lose

Even though Solyndra went into bankruptcy the government didn't "lose." The purpose of the government's involvement was to help trigger the development of green-energy manufacturing in the United States, not to help individual companies. This was not a direct investment in a company with the expectation of a profit for the government. In the bigger picture of promoting American leadership in the emerging green-energy industry the government's loan guarantee was a success. Even though Solyndra's investors lost out our country retains the trained skilled employees, the intellectual property, the innovators funded, the suppliers, and the factory. As components of a national effort to trigger a key strategic industry, those are all still there and in the US.

It isn't the government's job to make sure the investors make money, the government's job is to work to keep all of these components of an industry here and to grow new ones here, and this is what has been accomplished. When a VC makes an investment, a company failing just goes on the books as a loss. But our government has succeeded even if Solyndra's investors lost money because the country as a whole benefits. All these employees are trained, all the researchers can take what they know to other solar companies, the IP is going to be sold -- and it should be part of the conditions that it be sold to an American company. So while Solyndra's for-profit investors lost money, America's larger effort to nurture a solar-power industry continues toward its goal with assets enabled by this loan guarantee.

Facts:

The loan program started under President Bush (note - see above, Walton family.) From the San Jose Mercury News, October, 2008:

In late 2007, Solyndra was one of 16 clean-tech companies deemed eligible for $4 billion worth of loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy. Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley electric carmaker, and Oakland's BrightSource Energy, a builder of solar-thermal plants, also made that list.

The effort to fund Solyndra in particular started under Bush (note - see above, Walton family.) DOE: A Competition Worth Winning, (PS look at the chart in this post to understand why loan guarantees and other government assistance are so important!!!)

This loan guarantee was pursued by both the Bush and Obama Administrations. Private sector investors – who put more than $1 billion of their own money on the line – also saw great potential in the company.

Also, from the DOE post, the reason it is important for government to do this:

Our loan program catalyzes American innovation and private sector investment behind promising companies -- so that American workers have a chance to compete against China and other countries that much more heavily subsidize clean energy companies.

The loan was 1.3% of the DOE portfolio.

Feds Refused to Bail Out Solyndra,

One day after the federal government refused to bail out Solyndra, the Fremont-based solar company announced it was filing for bankruptcy and shedding most of its 1,100 workers.

According to a memo released Monday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, officials with the Department of Energy and Solyndra entered into negotiations "in the first few weeks of August" over a proposed financial restructuring agreement, but were never able to reach an agreement.

Resources

Think Progress has an excellent timeline of the Solyndra loan guarantee: Exclusive Timeline: Bush Administration Advanced Solyndra Loan Guarantee for Two Years, Media Blow the Story

Grist has a good story laying out how conservatives are attacking green energy. See The conservative game plan on energy subsidies

Grist also looks into the Bush adminsitration's efforts on behalf of Solyndra, in,Bush admin pushed Solyndra loan guarantee for two years.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Sign up here for the CAF daily summary.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:27 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 28, 2011

Three Charts To Email To Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law

Problem: Your right-wing brother-in-law is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "Stimulus" just made things worse. Solution: Here are three "reality-based" charts to send to him. These charts show what actually happened.

Spending

Government spending increased dramatically under Bush. It has not increased much under Obama. Note that this chart does not reflect any spending cuts resulting from deficit-cutting deals.

Deficits

Notes, this chart includes Clinton's last budget year for comparison.

The numbers in these two charts come from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2012. They are just the amounts that the government spent and borrowed, period, Anyone can go look then up. People who claim that Obama "tripled the deficit" are either misled or are trying to mislead.

The Stimulus and Jobs

In this chart, the RED lines on the left side -- the ones that keep doing DOWN -- show what happened to jobs under the policies of Bush and the Republicans. We were losing lots and lots of jobs every month, and it was getting worse and worse. The BLUE lines -- the ones that just go UP -- show what happened to jobs when the stimulus was in effect. We stopped losing jobs and started gaining jobs, and it was getting better and better. The leveling off on the right side of the chart shows what happened as the stimulus started to wind down: job creation leveled off at too low a level.

It looks a lot like the stimulus reversed what was going on before the stimulus.

Conclusion: THE STIMULUS WORKED BUT WAS NOT ENOUGH!

More False Things

These are just three of the false things that everyone "knows." Some others are (click through): Obama bailed out the banks, businesses will hire if they get tax cuts, health care reform cost $1 trillion, Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme or is "going broke", government spending "takes money out of the economy."

Why This Matters

These things really matter. We all want to fix the terrible problems the country has. But it is so important to know just what the problems are before you decide how to fix them. Otherwise the things you do to try to solve those problems might just make them worse. If you get tricked into thinking that Obama has made things worse and that we should go back to what we were doing before Obama -- tax cuts for the rich, giving giant corporations and Wall Street everything they want -- when those are the things that caused the problems in the first place, then we will be in real trouble.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

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Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 19, 2011

Mr President, Don’t Cut Them Slack When They Threaten Us And Our Economy

Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry, threatening Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, over his efforts to boost the economy:

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in history is almost treasonous in my opinion.”

Perry believes that efforts to help the economy are "politics" because helping the economy helps President Obama in the coming election. Perry’s comments brought into the open the Republican mindset about the economy: They want it to tank – and are working to tank it – because they believe a poor economy will help them in the coming election. They see helping the economy as "politics" that help Obama.

Hostage-Taking And Intimidation

Republicans recently threatened to take the country into default, which brought about the "credit-rating downgrade" from Standard & Poors. The result of this hostage-taking was an economy-killing deal to take trillions of dollars out of the economy, immediately sending the stock market and economic indicators like consumer confidence into a dive. Republicans previously used hostage-taking to keep tax cuts for the wealthy, thereby dramatically increasing deficits and economy-killing income/wealth disparity. Then they used hostage-taking threats to "shut down the government" to force economy-killing cuts in services to regular people.

Time after time Republicans are obstructing, delaying, bullying, doing whatever they can to keep the economy from recovering. Hostage-taking, intimidation, bullying tactics, and they are not even above use of physical threats to get their way.

JFK Assassinated In Texas

This flyer was circulating around Dallas in the days before Kennedy's assassination:

Governor Perry threatened Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s safety, using language echoing 60s-era accusations against President John F. Kennedy. A person who could be the next President accusing a public official of the death-penalty crime of "treason" is about as serious as it gets. On top of that, it is not easy to forget what this kind of talk means in Texas. President Kennedy was accused of "treason," too, and Texas treated him “ugly” in November, 1963. There is no possibility that a Governor of the state of Texas is not very aware that this event occurred there, and of the political climate in Texas at the time it occurred, and of what saying to a high federal official that "we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas" necessarily brings to mind.

Cut Him Slack?

In response to Perry's threat against Bernanke, President Obama said he will "cut him some slack."

"Mr. Perry just got into the presidential race. I think that everybody who runs for president, it probably takes them a little bit of time before they start realizing that this isn't like running for governor or running for senator or running for Congress, and you've got to be a little more careful about what you say," Obama responded.

"But I'll cut him some slack. He's only been at it for a few days now," he said.

Cut him slack for threatening the Chairman of the Federal Reserve? Cut him slack for saying that efforts to get our economy going are "treason?"

Mr. President, you were elected by We, the People to empower and protect us. You have a duty to take on those who threaten us, and threaten our livelihoods and prosperity and wish to harm our government. You owe it to us to be tough in the face of intimidation and hostage-taking.

Mr. President, do not "cut them some slack" when they threaten us and take hostages! Confront them head on, shame them, call them out for these actions. If you "cut them some slack" the bullies will continue to do these things again and again, as they have been doing for some time. You owe it to us, to We, the People, to put a stop to this and we gave you the power to do that.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

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Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:56 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 13, 2011

Republicans Call Instrastructure Spending "Extremism"

Just wow. The following are Republican reactions to this Contract for the American Dream video:

This headline is not the Onion, it's a conservative outlet: Van Jones Forces Innocent Children to Advocate Infrastructure Spending, Oppose Corporate Personhood on YouTube

... cute kids mouth bizarrely sophisticated talking points, including words and phrases they almost certainly don't understand, such as "infrastructure," "living wage," and "tax brackets."

Go read the horrible, nasty comments left by the readers. The usual batch of "High tech Hitler Youth, imo." and "Loving Uncle Sam has nothing but the childrens' best interests at heart. Love The Fatherland."

And this one. Van Jones and MoveOn.Org team up to brainwash children | Wizbang

We’re dealing with some radical folks here… radicals attempting to hide their extremism behind the smiles of unsuspecting and exploited children.

Sick stuff.

Made sicker when, as Michelle Malkin documents, you understand who it is that Van Jones is teaming with to further his agenda… not just MoveOn.Org as Greyhawk notes, but the Union thugs at SEIU and the AFL-CIO.

Jones’ use of children and his choice of thugs as partners in the carrying out of his ideas seems fitting.

... Leftists today will go to any length to advance the cause to include thuggery and the exploitation of children.

Sick stuff indeed.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:04 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

June 14, 2011

Another Racist Republican Corporate-Funded Ad

As offensive as can be... 2012 is going to be just terrible.

This is for a special election in LA with Democrat Janice Hahn against Republican Craig Huey.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:21 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

May 31, 2011

The Politics of 2012 and Maybe 2016

Will Sarah Palin, Congressman Paul Ryan or Newt go under the bus? This is quite a polemic for our Republican brethren that have always made hay on their brilliant use of language while we Dems contemplated our sleepy intellectualism. Perhaps finally in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the President's irrefutable victories, and the Arab spring -- maybe the forces have finally aligned for the Democrats together with social media to counter balance the megaphone of the Right wing propaganda.

Given that language and propaganda are not working, who will be the first to be thrown under the bus for the greater good of the Republican Party? Will it be Sarah our old pal from the McCain campaign that has built a $25M industry around her 2008 candidacy to the chagrin of the Party elders? Or will it be the "real" Palin appropriately coined as such by the supporters of Michelle Bachman on national television? Or have the women folk run their course in Republican Land? And if so has the time come to "man-up" with a few good, old white conservative male Governors from Conservativeville - like Tim Pawlenty or Jon Huntsman? Or better yet will it be Newt who inappropriately danced on the head of Congressman Paul Ryan and his budget plan -- only to refute it later? Sadly, for the Republicans all of this is off putting for guys like Mitt, or even Governor Chris Christie that appeal to the moderates of both parties.

Admittedly, any candidate, male or female, needs the proverbial brass cajoles, or other such accoutrements to challenge this sitting President after the take down of Osama bin Laden. This factoid together with Obama's recent tough stance on the Middle East clearly levels the playing field. The scare tactics of the past cannot work at this rodeo particularly when bundled with the wholesale lunacy of the Republican leadership on the debt ceiling, Medicare and the budget. Vice President Biden in an LA Times piece summarizes well when referring to the Osama take-down as a "defining moment" for the Obama presidency. Certainly, this together with the broken Republican message machine is having an impact. Terms like "Mediscare" are not getting the same kind of traction as "ObamaCare" did just last year, or the coinage of the term "entitlement" used to pollute a whole generations' thinking on Medicare and Social Security. Of course, Newt and his merry gang of language shapers keep trying to spin, but it is not sticking. Maybe in Newt's case, folks have had enough of those that behave badly, pander family values, but live on the edge of exorbitant wealth. For him it appears that there is just no way to explain away things like the Tiffany's account to the Middle Class. Further is there now cause to wonder if the day has come for Sarah, sweet Sarah, who walks the walk on reality television, but lives shall we say in Palin vernacular, high off the hog.

Indeed, the President and the Party are on the right side of the budget, Medicare, Social Security, national security, jobs and climate change. But can he and the Dems maintain this momentum when the banks, remember those pesky money men, continue to behave poorly. The reality is that folks are as fed up with these fat cats as they are with the empty threats of Right wing rhetoric and the bad behavior of men of a certain age and power whether they represent Hollywood, government or international politics.

Note to the Democratic Party: clean up the banks, the bankers and all of the bad behavior of their ilk and 2012 is a shoe-in, and maybe even 2016. Let's think like Republicans and chart the waters for the next eight years.

Posted by Michelle at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 28, 2011

Typical Conservative Tricksters

Why are so many conservative "arguments" really just tricks, trying to fool people?

See American Thinker: Bush or Obama: The Quiz

4. Bush was criticized for excessive federal spending and running up huge deficits. Bush's deficit in 2008 was the largest in history. In fact, President Obama said,

It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they've presided over a doubling of the national debt ... What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place.

Whose deficit was more than triple the size of the other's: Bush's in 2008 or Obama's in 2009?

The correct answer? The 2009 budget, with its 1.4 trillion deficit, was also Bush's. The 2009 budget year began in September 2009, before the election. The "stimulus" had barely started b ythe end of that fiscal year. This according to the Cato Institute.

This is what so many "conservatives" are made of. At least Cato Institute showed integrity.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:12 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

January 14, 2011

Trolling For Assassins

Everyone should read Trolling for Assassins, about "Becking," or "stochastic terrorism":

Think of cigarette smoking. We don’t know who will get cancer from the smoke – even though we can be confident that the death rate goes up the more people smoke. Or think of an advertiser who has no idea which viewers will buy their product -- yet spends millions confident that the ad campaign will pay for itself. As Gabby Giffords said so well, words and images have consequences. She had no way of knowing who the shooter would be, or when violence would strike, or that she herself would be among the victims.

From Stochastic Terrorism: Triggering the shooters:

Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.

his is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting.

This is also the term for what Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others do. And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings.

. . . Here's the mechanism spelled out concisely:

The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts.

One or more unstable people responds to the incitement by becoming a lone wolf and committing a violent act. While their action may have been statistically predictable (e.g. "given the provocation, someone will probably do such-and-such"), the specific person and the specific act are not predictable (yet).

The stochastic terrorist then has plausible deniability: "Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could have predicted he would do that, and I'm not responsible for what people in my audience do."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:11 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

July 6, 2010

If You Feed Them They Breed -- And Other Dehumanizing Conservative Idiocy We Should Ignore

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

The country is in an economic emergency. Unemployment -- especially long-term unemployment -- is at extremely high levels and the recovery is faltering. Conservatives are obstructing efforts to solve this because they believe it helps them in the November election. To this end conservatives are throwing out every possible argument against helping the economy to see if any of them stick, and to provide cover for opposing taking any action that might help matters.

The latest nonsense they are spreading is that helping the unemployed keeps them from finding jobs. Good Lord! This is basically the old "if you feed them they just breed" storyline. They say "it makes them dependent" as if hard-working people laid off because of Wall Street's scams are squirrels. Or, to hear the nasty way conservatives talk about these human beings, they are like rats. "Hobos," one Congressman called the unemployed! And the DC elite listen, chuckle and repeat.

But while they say unemployment assistance keeps these lazy parasites from finding jobs, they also obstruct bills that create jobs by maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure. This tells you it's just something they say, to cover for what they do. And what they do is obstruct any effort to fix the problem because they believe they will benefit if it is not fixed.

For example, the big DC drumbeat right now is against "spending." They claim that government spending caused the crisis, ignoring and passing the buck on everything that actually caused it, especially their deregulation and their lack of oversight. They blame government for everything, so why should this be different.

Along these lines they claim that the stimulus didn't work, or even that spending made the problem worse, because there are still people out of work. But look at the following chart. The right side of the chart shows the effect of the stimulus. (Source, Jed Lewison and Karina Newton)

A conservative, anti-government myth that is everywhere now is that "Government forced banks to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back, and this caused the financial collapse" -- and its variant that it was about forcing banks to "help minorities. This is an example of the tactic of repeating a lie over and over until enough people believe it. To deflect people from understanding what really caused the crisis and from seeing that they are obstructing the effort to reform the financial system they made this one up" Unfortunately this has become what bloggers call a "zombie lie" -- no matter how many times you prove it is just a lie, it comes back from the dead.

The Zombie Lie Problem

The "zombie lie" problem shows that it is a mistake to think that just arguing facts is a way to shoot this stuff down. Spending your time arguing facts with people who are trying to mislead misses the point. The lie is not about the facts, it is cover for the obstruction. When you try to argue a fact they will make up something else to throw you off track. Facts are not what this is about, feeding a narrative of no action is what this is about, because they understand that a bad economy helps them in the Fall.

Listening to this stuff at all, and trying to argue facts just contributes to the lack of action. There comes a point when you have to stop llsteneing and getting bogged down by intentional distractions and get something done for the economy and the public.

It Is Time To Stop Listening To This Stuff And ACT

Enough with these stupid, heartless, dehumanizing right wing "if you feed them they breed" arguments that are preventing action. People are out of work and the recovery is faltering. It is time to push aside the nay-sayers, and get something done. The government simply has to step in and act. First, do the minimal, obvious things:

1) Pass the unemployment extension, because people can't find jobs.

2) Continue COBRA subsidies, because so many of the long-term unemployed are older people who cannot get or afford insurance any other way. This is simple humanity, people! And, by the way, COBRA itself is running out for many people, never mind subsidies.

3) Send aid to the states. 900,000 jobs in the states are riding on this help.

At a minimum do this. Don't get lost in the weeds of what bill to attach it to. Just do it. Bring it out by itself for an up or down vote so the public can clearly see who is helping and who is voting against jobs and help for the unemployed.

But what Congress really ought to be doing is passing the George Miller "Local Jobs for America Act." .

As economists like Paul Krugman keep saying we risk going into a serious depression. At the least we are entering a pattern of slight recovery, slight decline for a decade. Look at what happened to Ireland when they tried "austerity."

Here is an undeniable fact about government spending. Government spending on infrastructure creates the conditions that enable businesses to prosper. Tax cuts leave nothing behind, but the roads, transit systems, ports, electric grid, Internet, courts, schools, universities, research, and all the rest that government spending creates make us competitive and are needed by businesses

Do it. Ignore the obstructors who are trying to set the stage for November. Put people to work. Help the long-term unemployed. Pass jobs bills.. And spend on modernizing our infrastructure so American can be competitive again.

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Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:47 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

June 22, 2010

Obama Just Like Hitler

Here we go. Obama is making BP set up a fund to compensate its victims, and this is just like Hitler: Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:53 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 26, 2010

Can You Spot The Lie?

Can you spot the lie in this chart?

Answer is here.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 17, 2010

What We're Up Against

A look at conservative media, from Media Matters:

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:03 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Zombie Lies Never Die

Note that the date on this is Saturday, April 17, one or two days after the New Orleans police said that much of what is in this never happened: Republican Officials Attacked and Injured in New Orleans - Townhall.com,

On the night of Friday April 9th, a petite female political operative and her boyfriend were attacked and seriously injured in New Orleans by a vicious group of crazed cowards who shrieked political insults while pouncing. After the pummeling, the petite female and her boyfriend were left, collectively, with a compound leg fracture, a concussion, a broken nose and broken jaw. No robbery occurred.

But wait!....Don’t waste your time--if you’re Googling for this item on CNN, New York Times, Wa-Po, MSNBC, Huff-Po, ABC, Salon, CBS, etc. --that is.

This story builds on the conservative resentment narrative - all those elites pick on people like me. It is very important for conservatives to feel they are victimized. The problem is that this is starting to incite actual violence.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:17 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 4, 2010

Nothing But Lies

Please read Only the truth has been changed to protect the guilty -- It's short and includes this great Rachel Maddow commentary:

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:39 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 1, 2010

Look Who's Funding Climate Change Denial

Go see. Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine | Greenpeace USA

So when you hear from the Mercastus Center, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute or a lot of other "think tanks" you're actually hearing from Koch Industries - a giant oil company.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:02 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

March 13, 2010

Horrible Right-Wingers

This is just horrible: Isn't It Time To Euthanize Reid's Wife?

Of course, the press will dig up something that was posted in a comment on a liberal blog several years ago, and tell the public "both sides do it."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:45 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

March 6, 2010

Conservatives Caused Huge Deficits, Blame Obama

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Headline at Drudge Report: Obama policies projected to add $9.7 trillion to debt by 2020... points to this story, National debt to be higher than White House forecast, CBO says,

President Obama's proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. Proposed tax cuts for the middle class account for nearly a third of that shortfall.

So here is the deal. This Drudge headline, saying Obama's spending "adds to the deficit" is a trick. Here is how it works. Suppose you take over a company that is losing $100 million a year, and your jobs is to turn it around. So perhaps the second year the company only loses $70 million, $30 million the third year, and breaks even in year four. You saved the company. But in those years the company "lost" another $100 million. Should you be fired?

President Obama took office as President of a country with a $1.4 trillion deficit - thanks to the failure of conservative policies. Their tax cuts, wars, military buildups, corruption and incompetence drove the borrowing WAY up, and then their deregulation, corruption and incompetence destroyed the economy, driving the borrowing up into the stratosphere.

If the borrowing just stayed the same at the $1.4 trillion level Obama inherited each year -- never mind that interest on all that borrowing gets higher and higher each year -- that would mean $14 trillion would be added to the deficit by 2020. That's a LOT more than the $9.7 trillion that Drudge and the conservatives are making so much noise about. Obama is dramatically reducing the borrowing, but they use trickery to make it look like he is causing it.

What about that $1.4 trillion deficit? That was the deficit for the 2009 budget year. Conservatives say -- over and over -- that Obama "tripled the deficit" in 2009. This isn't even a trick, it is just a lie. The final Bush budget year ended with a deficit of $1.4 trillion. Conservatives have been telling the public this was an "Obama Deficit" and use graphics and charts that label this last Bush budget as Obama's. Look at that chart, and then look at this. The first chart is nothing more than a lie, of course repeated endlessly.

But what else should you expect? Like the scorpion that stings the frog as the frog ferries it across the river, it's what they do. They screw things up, and then point the finger of blame at everyone else.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:57 PM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

February 25, 2010

NYTimes Owes Us An ACORN Smear Retraction

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

A month ago while covering the arrest of James O'Keefe after his attempt to tamper with the phones at Senator Mary Landrieu's office the New York Times repeated conservative misinformation that smeared ACORN, and is now refusing to retract their "reporting."

James O'Keefe previously had released videos that purported to show ACORN employees supposedly advising a "pimp" on how to evade the law. These videos were widely publicized in conservative outlets as part of a larger conservative campaign to destroy ACORN, because the organization registers poor people to vote. Usually-careful major media outlets like the New York Times then picked up the "story" from these conservative outlets and repeated the false accusations against ACORN.

An an example of how the Times has repeated the misinformation, this Times story, High Jinks to Handcuffs for Landrieu Provocateur, contained the following:

Mr. O’Keefe made his biggest national splash last year when he dressed up as a pimp and trained his secret camera on counselors with the liberal community group Acorn — eliciting advice on financing a brothel on videos that would threaten to become Acorn’s undoing.

In fact, O'Keefe was NOT "dressed as a pimp." He represented himself as a candidate for Congress who was trying to help women who were being exploited. He then doctored the resulting videotapes to make it appear that ACORN acted improperly. He only dressed as a "pimp" when publicizing his videos, using the racist stereotype to amplify his false claims. This preposterous 1970's blaxploitation-movie costume seemed to resonate with media outlets like the Times. (The woman who played the "prostitute" in the videos has herself been videotaped verifying that O'Keefe DID NOT wear a "pimp" costume.)

Compare the impression left by this NY Times story with other independently verified facts of the case as explained in : ACORN Report Finds No Illegal Conduct, which describes former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger's investigation of the accusations. Among the investigation's conclusions,

The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

The Brad Blog has taken the lead with efforts to get the NY Times to retract their reporting. From yesterday's post, Exclusive: NYTimes Public Editor Declines to Recommend Retraction for Multiple Erroneous Reports on False ACORN 'Pimp' Story,

We've spent the last several weeks here reporting and demonstrating how the O'Keefe/Breitbart ACORN video hoax was exactly that --- a political partisan scam that was publicized uncritically by the New York Times, and dozens of otherwise reputable outlets.

Despite the Times' repeatedly misreporting that O'Keefe was dressed or posed as a "pimp" while meeting with ACORN employees in those videos, and even after being shown in no uncertain terms that he did not, the Times' Public Editor has declined to recommend the paper retract its reporting on this story.

The next day, in NYT Public Editor Accuses The BRAD BLOG of 'Political Agenda' on Par With ACORN Smear Artists, Hoaxsters Breitbart and O'Keefe, New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt offered the following stunning statement,

The story says O’Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on Acorn counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time

Also at this Brad Blog post are links to a number of other blogs following this story.

You can take action by clicking through to: Tell the NY Times: retract anti-ACORN reportage.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 9, 2010

NYTimes "Stands By" False Reporting

Last month I posted NYT Propels Anti-ACORN Propaganda,

The NY Times ran a story today about the "high jinks" of the right-wing smear artist O'Keefe, repeating the smears on ACORN, without mentioning the investigations that concluded his ACORN videotapes were doctored and that ACORN employees did nothing wrong.

The Times reported as fact that O'Keefe was "dressed as a pimp" - he was not, he was representing himself as a candidate for Congress - and that ACORN employees gave advice on setting up a brothel - when an investigation concluded that the videos were "heavily edited" and had "substitute voicovers" inserted to make it sound like ACORN employees said things they did not.

Brad Friedman pressed the Times on this. The Times said it "stands by" the story and cites FOX News as their source.

Go read the whole thing - it's really quite stunning.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:29 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

December 30, 2009

"The System Worked" Is Another Big Lie

Just so you know the facts:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that once the incident occurred, "the system worked." AFTER the bombing attempt people did their jobs and procedures were followed.

Republicans have twisted this into a widespread big lie that she claimed that "the system worked" in response to questions about how the guy got on the plane with explosives.

Well OF COURSE no one would say that. And the system did work, AFTER the bombing attempt.

Here is what she said, unedited and complete, which you won't see on any Republican news networks:

NAPOLITANO: One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action. Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight. We instituted new measures on the ground and at screening areas, both here in the United States and in Europe where this flight originated. So, the whole process of making sure that we respond properly, correctly and effectively went very smoothly.

Rachel Maddow did a good job on this the other day, so take a look here: Rachel Maddow systematically dismantles GOP attacks on failed Christmas Day bombing attempt.

All they have is smears and lies. Don't fall for it.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:14 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

December 28, 2009

The Right's Nasty Propaganda Machine

Here's a typical right-wing propaganda operation. The right has been working to knock down the public's positive impression of John F Kennedy for decades because JFK is a stand-in for "liberals" in people's minds. If they can get people to think negatively about JFK they can get them to think negatively of liberals. I've been watching this campaign unfold for decades. Some billionaire somewhere put a ton of money into this and the funding still hasn't run out...

So out comes a nasty hit piece on JFK, with an old "snapshot" on old, crinkled-up photo paper, supposedly showing JFK on a yacht with naked women.

The sensational headline: "The JFK Photo That Could Have Changed History." The cover story:

The photo was eventually given to a man who owned a car dealership on the East coast. The man kept it in a drawer for years, and would brag to friends he had an image of JFK on a boat with naked women. The man died 10 years ago and one of his sons inherited the photo.

Of course the right's blogs pick it up... eliciting the comments that give voice to what we are all supposed to think:

It just another affirmation that the Kennedy's were PIGS and they lived a life of LIES. They then FORCED their disgusting liberalism on Conservative Americans while professing to live the life of good Catholics while living the life of TRASH!

But now in the age of the internet these kinds of things get exposed and we all find out pretty quickly.

In reality, the photo appeared in story about Playboy's "Charter Yacht Party: How to Have a Ball on the Briny with an Able-Bodied Complement of Ship's Belles." As seen in the below page from the November 1967 issue, the Playboy photo is in color. The "Exclusive" TMZ image is the same photo, just reproduced in black and white.

So, was it up on Drudge and pulled down, or hadn't they put it up yet. Is the Washington Times quickly pulling a front-page story? Will Limbaugh talk about it anyway? Will it become another conservative "truth?"

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:36 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

December 15, 2009

This Health Reform Bill Is Political Suicide

I posted this earlier at Open Left

Back in July I wrote here, in Democrats Had Better Find Hiding Places

I said it the other day, and I feel the need to repeat it: the public does not yet understand that the government is about to order people to buy health insurance, with their own money. Yes, the government is about to order people to cough up hundreds of dollars a month each.

When the Republicans start using their toxic message-machine magic on this, and the public starts to understand that they are being ordered by the government to cough up a huge amount of money every month, Democrats had better have good hiding places, because things are going to get really bad out there.

This is the kind of policy that results when "centrist" Democrats give in to to the demands of Republicans and big corporations and the top 1% of the wealthy. Instead of just taxing the wealthy and corporations at reasonable rates and using the money to provide We, the People with health care -- thereby vastly improving the economy for ... the wealthy and big corporations -- they instead come up with a scheme to order regular people to pay for health insurance because they don't already have it because they can't afford it.

Now it is December and the current health care reform bill orders everyone to buy very expensive insurance from the big corporations, with no public option and no Medicare buy-in. Even if you are in the income range where you receive subsidies you have to pay "only" 9 or 10% of your income, at a time when people are runnng up credit cards just to get by as it is. That is with the subsidies. Above that level you pay more.

The public hasn't really tuned into this yet, but if this passes and Republicans start working their toxic magic (with of course little or no organized effort by Dems to counter their lies and sell it to the public) I expect this will be as unppular as Bush's bailout of the big financial firms, which the Republicans have largely engineered the public into thinking was Obama's, just as they did with the Bush deficits.

So I think that when all these factors come into play for the next election, passing this will turn out to be suicide for the Democrats who hold office. They don't see that because at this point are in a mindset that the public wants them to just get it over with and pass anything.

But this is bad beyond just the next election.

Here is the larger problem: the public is going to judge US - progressives, liberals, Democrats, etc. - based on what these clucks pass.

This health "reform" bill plays right into decades of conservative/corporate propaganda about liberals and their policies - and government in general. Republicans will sell it as "big government ordering you around and reaching into your pocket" and the corporate media will echo that until everyone sees it that way. There won't be a word explaining that this money actually goes to big corporations, it will be about everyone losing the insurance they have and how people will soon be paying big money to a "government insurance bureaucracy." (Are we going to counter this by saying, "well, no, actually it goes to big corporations not government"?)

And, frankly, why should the public ever again listen to anyone left of John McCain after this, if this is what happens when Democrats get power? It is just wrong to use that power to order everyone to shell out a huge amount of money - while Wall Street hands out billions of taxpayer dollars as bonuses. They will be portrayed as confirming what the right has been saying about "liberals" they use the power of the state to order people to follow elitist schemes - which is exactly what this is, a scheme where elite people with power decide what is good for the rest of us - mandates are important because you can't cover pre-existing without them, etc. THIS is where a President is supposed to be a leader come in and insist on broader guidelines with a veto threat.

What I am most afraid of is what will happen when Republicans start making up shit about what passed, while people feel no immediate benefit. It doesn't take effect right away so it will just be this looming, terrifying, expensive "big government" program coming at people in a few years that is going to cost everyone a lot of money and ruin our health care system. Without sufficient immediate benefits that people feel, on the scale of free insurance for everyone, the Republicans will have lots of time to just make up shit about what is coming if they don't vote for Republicans so they can repeal it.

Unless you're pretty sure that Repubilcans wouldn't do that, wouldn't just make shit up to scare people. If you're like Senate Democrats who seem to think that, don't worry about this.

Here is what I am talking about. Last night I was driving and heard on the radio that there will be a 15-year jail term if you don't buy this government insurance. The announcer also said the bill bans things like Snickers bars, and that there is funding in the bill for government to come in and check your house for unhealthy food, as the liberals define it.

That is what I heard on the radio last night. This is what's out there now -- just the beginning of the 2010 election mantra.

And what are we going to do, explain that it isn't a 15-year jail term, only a big fine?

The bigger picture - the sellout.

Isn't this mandate to buy insurance really just another form of privatization of a pubilc service? In this case it is maintaining a privatization-by-refusing-to-provide. Most other countries provide health care as a right - a core function of government. But here privateers have seized it for themselves for profit. So to maintain this, to keep taxes low for the rich and keep the profits privatized we are ordered to buy it from companies instead of having it provided as a government service. This is the battle between democracy and plutocracy.

If this bill is passed and signed (progressives can filibuster, too) it means that Democrats as a party have abdicated their role as defenders of democracy against the forces of organized wealth.

Wrap it up

I hate to say this but money flowing out of big corporations has outmaneuvered the public good once again. If we don't pass a health care bill the Democrats have done little to show the public the value of showing up and electing Democrats: there is very high unemployment, no one has been held accountable for the crimes and corruption of the Bush years and Wall Street got and kept their bonuses after crashing the economy - $140 billion just this year. But if we do pass this, the way it is, it's even worse. And the joke is that this fix we're in is being engineered by a bunch of lobbyists!

So I'm with Chris,

I don't intend to help this bill pass. If progressives get backstabbed by Lieberman and then ordered to cave at the finish line, then as far as I am concerned the White House has made its own bed with this. They can try and pass the bill, but they are going to have to do it on their own. I'm not helping. In fact, I kind of just want to hang out in the tall grass for a while and plot my revenge.

But I am also trying to sound a warning, to wake up Democratic leadership and try to head off this disaster. Pass a good bill, not an insurance lobbyist's dream.

Tell me again, why was "Medicare-For-All" off the table? All of this complicated, 2000-page jumble of backroom deals and mandates and confusing formulas is to avoid just giving the people what they want - health care. And the reason it was off the table was to avoid being called "socialst."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:07 PM | Comments (5) | Link Cosmos

November 16, 2009

Washington Times Against Protectionism Before They Were For It

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

President Obama is visiting Asia, and is blasted over and over about America's supposedly "protectionist" policies.

"China on Monday accused the United States of increasing protectionism..."

Think about it, the country with the massive trade surplus accuses the country with the massive trade deficit of being "protectionist." Call it The Audacity Of Projection.

Our trade opponents have learned that all they have to do is shout the word “protectionist” and their American enablers will quickly run from doing anything that might help American companies and workers. But what happens later, when the consequences start hitting home? Do the "free trade" shouting, foreign-competition enablers take the blame and accept responsibility when Amercan dollars are spent overseas and American workers lose jobs and American factories close? Who could have known that they would point the finger at the President instead of themselves?

Here is what I am talking about:

On February 8, 2009, during the debate over the stimulus package, the conservative Washington Times joined the "free trade" chorus, denouncing the package's proposed "Buy American" requirements as the same kind of "protectionism" that conservative mythology says caused the Great Depression: EDITORIAL: How to cause a depression,

...Tucked within the economic stimulus bill the House passed last week was a clause requiring state and local public works agencies to buy American iron and steel for their reconstruction projects, and the Senate expanded it to all manufactured goods.

[. . .] The stimulus bill has a way to go before it reaches Mr. Obama's desk, but if strong "buy American" mandates are present at that time, he will have no choice but to veto the bill. Otherwise, he will be forever known as Barack H. (Hoover or Hawley) Obama.

Conservative free-traders got what they demanded. In response to these and other cries of “protectionism!” the Senate backed away from the Buy American clause, changing it to vague language requiring that the money be spent in ways consistent with existing treaties.

Since this wording gives the President some discretion in how the money is spent conservatives started demanding the President spend it ... outside of the country. For example, a Washington Times editorial on March 24, EDITORIAL: The Mexican-American War of 2009, ended by blasting President Obama for wanting American stimulus dollars to stimulate America's economy:

"Wasn't Mr. Obama going to be the "international" president who was going to get the rest of the world to love us? The path to improving relations does not involve destroying jobs in other countries as well as in our own."

So now it turns out that many stimulus dollars are being spent according to the wishes of the "free trade" conservatives, with money to purchase wind turbines creating jobs in Europe and China, and who could have known, the very same free-trade conservatives are JUST OUTRAGED that President Obama is sending American stimulus dollars out of the country! For example, a Washington Times editorial on November 13, EDITORIAL: Stimulus creates jobs in China, begins,

Of the $1 billion in clean-energy stimulus money spent since the beginning of September, $850 million has gone to foreign wind companies. It doesn't take a bunch of experts at a hastily planned "jobs summit" to discover this isn't the way to bolster employment in America.

Indeed, the 11 U.S. wind farms that received stimulus money from the Treasury have imported 695 of the 982 wind turbines to be installed, creating 4,500 jobs overseas. That's far more overseas work than the stimulus money has created in the United States.

Yes, how DARE they not require that American stimulus dollars be spent in America! This from the very same Washington Times editors who earlier in the year demanded exactly that.

Who could have known that conservatives would attack President Obama for the consequences of giving in to conservative demands??!! The Washington Times was against protectionism before they were for it. Call it The Audacity Of Hypocrisy.

The lesson to be learned here is to stop listening to these conservative, "free trade" clowns. They are only interested in making the rich richer at the expense of the rest of us and will say whatever advances that goal. We should start just doing what is right for the country, our workers, our factories, our companies and our jobs.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:30 PM | Comments (3) | Link Cosmos

November 3, 2009

Fight Clean Energy Smears

Take a look at Fight Clean Energy Smears!

The site looks at the smears and front groups that are working to keep good climate policy from passing.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:09 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 15, 2009

The Next Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory

This is going to sound really weird, but read it, and then come back in a few days and tell me if I was right. The next right-wing conspiracy theory is that Obama is controlling the TV-show companies and using them to control people's minds and get everyone to go join the communist party ... or something.

You have to know how they think to get this one. The prequel is that story about the group of kids in a school who were videotaped singing a song about helping the President. The video got onto YouTube and the wingnuts turned it into a conspiracy theory about "indoctrination." And they hold tea-party-style protests outside of the school now. And, of course, FOX News pushes the whole thing over and over.

So here is the new nutcase conspiracy theory. Between Oct 19 and 25 several TV shows are going to promote volunteerism and service. Therefore you are all going to be forced to join the communist party.

Wow. Get it?

No?

OK, volunteerism and service are ... wait for it ... liberal. Apparently if you click on the website that the shows put up to promote voluneering, you can find AARP, which is a liberal conspiracy.

Yes,that is what they are claiming. Go see for yourself. LEAKED NETWORK MEMO REVEALS: Obama Controls Your Television Set:

But this year there are a couple new strangers in town: “Volunteerism” and “Service.” You’ve heard of them. Their names have been bandied everywhere since President Obama took office...

... suggested topics pitched to an overwhelmingly left-of-center group: Education, health, environment, the economy and lastly — almost as an afterthought as some kind of “bi-partisan” cover – support for military families.

PART II: Search and Ye Shall Find…Left-Wing Advocacy:

The plan is to weave volunteerism and service into the plots of their shows and then, ultimately, encourage viewers to get up off their sofas and go to a handful of web pages that are meant to provide opportunities for service. ... these seemingly benign volunteer search engines often seem to be Trojan Horses for controversial, left-wing causes.

The October 19-25 “I Participate” campaign broadcast on all four major television networks for a full week of programming will point viewers to www.iparticipate.org (as mentioned in Ashton’s tweet) and the AARP’s www.createthegood.com web sites.

. . . When I clicked for more info I found out that the phone bank listing was a month old, but there was a handy link for other opportunities to serve Planned Parenthood...

... if you are in, say, Virginia and want to volunteer on an environmental project, the very first opportunity you get is to volunteer as a Global Warming Ambassador.

It continues like that.

Volunteering and heping others is a communist plot.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:18 PM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

September 22, 2009

ACORN Called Police - Update

Earlier I posted that an ACORN employee called the police on the "pimp & ho" featured in the videos everyone has been seeing. That was in National City, CA, near San Diego.

It turns out that ACORN employees also called police in Philadelphia.

AND ACORN employees in San Bernadino called the police [PDF].

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:19 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

ACORN Worker DID Report Pimp & Ho To Police

Police: ACORN worker in video reported couple:

Police say a worker with the activist group ACORN who was caught on video giving advice about human smuggling to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute had reported the incident to authorities.

Wanna guess how widely this is reported?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:17 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

RW Blogger Says Electing Black Man Bad For Race Relations

Just look at this nonsense, prominently featured at the Republican TownHall site: John Hawkins : 5 Reasons Obama's Election Is Bad For Race Relations

Against this backdrop came Barack Obama with an unspoken promise: elect me as President and America can put race in the rear view mirror once and for all. After all, if Americans elected a black President, how racist could the country really be?

[. . .] With black Americans, race comes first. If white Americans felt the same way, there's certainly no way that Barack Obama could ever have been elected President.

[. . .] Too many people have used racism as an all-purpose excuse for their failures in life. But, after a black man with mediocre qualifications rose all the way up to the become President of the United States, it seems natural to ask how much of an impediment race can really be in America?

[. . .] Barack Obama is playing an extremely cynical game with the race card. ... He doesn't ask his supporters to stop crying "racism." So, everyone who opposes him politically gets smeared as a racist, while he doesn't have to personally get his hands dirty. For a cynical, sleazy, manipulative politician, it's the best of both worlds. For the rest of the country, it's an ugly game that serves the country poorly.

. . . Obama is a bumbling, corrupt, megalomaniacal train wreck who has been a disaster at home and a weakling abroad. He can already legitimately be compared to the worst Presidents in American history -- yet, his approval rating with black Americans is still above 90%.

How healthy is it for the country to have 92% of black Americans approving of the job Obama is doing while only 42% of white Americans approve?

It is weird how color is the only thing Republicans seem to be able to see. That and the color of big-corporate money..

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:25 AM | Comments (2) | Link Cosmos

September 16, 2009

Fight Clean Energy Smears

Take a look at Fight Clean Energy Smears!.

Who's behind the smears? What are the facts of the particular smears?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:23 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 28, 2009

Fox Never Stops

I turn on Fox and they have someone standing in front of the Kennedy service, talking about Chappaquiddick.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:05 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

August 27, 2009

Obama Hunting Licenses - Idaho Repub. Gov. Candidate

This is pretty serious. This is indicative of a culture developing around the idea of assassinating Obama: BlueOregon: Look out teabaggers, birthers and deathers, the eliminationists are going to upstage you

From Oregon's Spain comes a story in which Idaho gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell pops off about buying an "Obama tag":

After an audience member shouted a question about "Obama tags" during a discussion on wolves, Rammell responded, "The Obama tags? We'd buy some of those."

Rammell later tried to couch his words as a joke, but apparently not enough of a joke to keep him from sending out a press release bragging about saying it.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:48 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 10, 2009

Fox Now Pushing Euthenasia Story

Here is a clip from Fox, promoting the story that kids in wheelchairs will be put to death by Obama's health care plan, with an additional incitement that Pelosi is sending thugs to visit people at night to threaten them. "The elderly will be discarded" etc...

Go watch: 'Concerned father' on Fox: Obama's health-care reforms 'sentencing our families to death' | Crooks and Liars.

Watch all the way to the end. There is no question they are trying to rile people up to an extreme degree and incite violence now.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:30 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

August 9, 2009

An Email I Received: Grandmas and Unborn Babies Face Extermination by Obama

This is how stupid they think people are:

Grandmas and Unborn Babies Face Extermination by Obama's "Health" Care Plan

Investors Business Daily has just exposed the Achilles' heel of Obamacare, that hostile, socialist government takeover of your hospital, doctors, children, and grandparents. In an editorial entitled, "How House Bill Runs Over Grandma," the editors report how President Obama was personally confronted by a North Carolina woman asking if "everyone that's Medicare age will be visited and told they have to decide how they wish to die."

In response Obama joked that he hadn't yet hired enough bureaucrats to conduct such an operation, yet he could not deny the New York Post's discovery the House bill "compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care" (pages 425-430). In other words, your grandmother will be told, when insufficient resources are rationed to young people, that her duty to die begins with mandatory "end-of-life counseling," or as Obama explained, "encourage the use of living wills" that terminate otherwise salvageable lives prematurely through signed "do not resuscitate" (DNR) legal releases.

1) EUTHANASIA is the first result of Obama's socialist government "health" care plan.

Bankrupt state can't afford to pay for grandma's hip replacement? Obama's plan sends her a lawyer to make her sign a DNR, explaining her hastened duty to die, and obtaining her signature legally absolving him of all guilt. Euthanasia begins where capitalism ends.

... Widely respected Minister Rick Joyner wrote this week, after reviewing Mat Staver's analysis of H.R. 3200 "Health" care bill, voicing his strong opinion that this bill "is about euthanasia, the power to determine who lives or dies in America. Hitler and Stalin would have loved to have had a means such as this for dispatching the millions they killed-it would have made their job much easier, and probably given them the ability to kill many more than they did. THIS BILL IS THAT SINISTER. This is not a joke."

. . . 3) Obama will REMOVE Christian prayers and symbols from Government-run hospitals

The hostile socialist government takeover of Catholic or Christian hospitals will eventually result in atheistic silencing of religious expression (and removing all Christian symbols) from the very place where faith in God is critical to sick and dying patients. For example, look at the Veterans Hospitals, already government-run, who are busy removing crosses and Christian symbols from their chapels (like in Iowa), because easily-offended atheist complainers have successfully intimidated hospital administrators with threats of lawsuit, by demanding separation of church and state. Just imagine more atheist lawsuits, when all Catholic and Christian hospitals are seized in the same way Obama took control of General Motors, inviting easily-offended atheist complainers to demand we change the name of the hospital from "St. Luke's Memorial" to the "Obama Government" hospital, falsely claiming tax-dollars cannot subsidize religion. But if St. Luke's refuses government subsidies, they will be drummed out of business, and Christian doctors' licenses revoked.

Etc...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:51 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

August 8, 2009

Death Panels Prove Barack Obama Murdered Vince Foster

The mystery is solved: Barack Obama murdered Vince Foster.

It should have been obvious all along. Of course Hillary could not have murdered Vince Foster in a secret "love nest" apartment. She had her agent Barack Obama do it for her. And Barack Obama put Vince Foster's body into the trunk of a car and drove it to the park where it was "found".

Barack Obama was also secretly smuggling cocaine from an airstrip in Arkansas. He held up traffic at the LA Airport while he got a $500 haircut. He fired the people in the Travel Office so he could give the job to a cousin. He sold plots in Arlington National Cemetery. He accepted secret money from China and transferred out nuclear secrets to the Chinese government.

Barack Obama betrayed us at Yalta.

Now Barack Hussein Obama is setting up Death Panels. This is the whole purpose, the culmination of the plan, the final chapter of health insurance reform, of killing Vince Foster, of smuggling cocaine and selling cemetery plots and taking over the travel office and selling nuclear secrets to China and engaging in the Whitewater scheme and shredding the Rose Law Firm files and crossing the border during the Korean War, and putting the microfilm in the pumpkin: It was, along with George Soros the Jew and other Hell-Demons, to finance the takeover so he could finally set up Death Panels across the country where the true American Patriots will be tried and summarily executed so that the Socialist Elders of the demon-gogs could ARISE and control our minds and sell our ports, and sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, and put Big Government Labor Bosses over the Silent Majority when he hypnotized the weak from his Pergamon Altar Nazi Pulpit Greek columns in Denver! It is OBVIOS!

Barack Obama has a lot to answer for.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:40 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

July 31, 2009

The Outer Limits!

You think the birthers are over the edge? Here comes the new smear, people:

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:49 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

58% Of Republicans Think Obama Not A Citizen Or Not Sure

,

Disturbing results from a new poll: Only 42 percent of Republicans believe President Obama is a citizen. 28 percent think he's not, and 30 percent say they're not sure.

Overall, the poll -- conducted by Daily Kos and Research 2000 -- found that overwhelming majorities of Democrats and independents do believe Obama's a citizen. 93 percent of self-identified Democrats, along with 83 percent of independents, gave that answer. Four percent of Democrats and eight percent of independents said they think the president is not a citizen.

Here's the thing. EVEN IF HE WAS BORN IN KENYA he would still be a citizen, because his mother was American. Dumbasses.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:52 AM | Comments (8) | Link Cosmos

May 23, 2009

Republicans Insulting Women As Usual

Taylor Marsh has the latest: RNC Tags Pelosi '€˜Pussy Galore'€™ in Video,

At the end it says “Democrats Galore.” Imposed with a naked woman behind the tag line. Get it? Subtle it is not. But check out the video at around :40 seconds; a split screen that says it all. “Pussy Galore” is shown with “Starring Nancy Pelosi the Speaker” over “Pussy’s” image.

Go see the video.

Taylor adds,

That a woman, let alone Speaker of the House, should never be hinted to in any public way through the use of “Pussy” insinuations should be obvious. That this is being used by a once major political party in the 21st century is stunning.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 26, 2009

On Jerry Brown’s Campaign For California Governor

He was called “Moonbeam” and mocked, but he was right, and we were right, and the country needs to come to terms with this this so we can move on and finally DO right.

Jerry Brown was Governor of California from 1975 to 1983. He was a symbol of “the 60’s” even though it was the 70's, because he came from the times, cared about the issues of the times, spoke the language of the times and governed for the people, from the times. He opposed the Vietnam war. He talked about protecting the environment and conserving energy and providing education and "Buddhist economics." He fought corporate power and sued large corporations, particularly in the area of campaign finance. He was right.

For taking these positions Jerry was called "Moonbeam" and mocked for advocating things that we now all understand were correct and necessary. It is 30 years later and the country needs to get past that mocking of the people who were right. But the mocking and obstruction by entrenched interests are still in the way of letting us move on and do the things we need to do for the economy, the country, and the planet.

Now Jerry is again running for Governor of California and I think this is important to our current national conversation at a time when we must come to terms with the reasons that we have waited 30 years to start doing something about major problems. Jerry’s campaign will force a conversation that will clarify for the country that the "dirty hippies" were right, that we need to learn to ignore the mocking that is a primary weapon of the corporate right, that we need to take care of the planet, that we need to take care of each other, that we need to be in charge of the corporations, not the other way around.

In his speech to the California Democratic Convention he talked about how 30 years ago he changed California's energy policies, and how the result has been that California has barely increased its energy use since while the rest of the country has. He talk about a number of things like this, but what most resonated with me was when he talked about how we educate kids. The current emphasis on testing is stifling the creativity of kids. He says we need to bring back education that stimulates creativity. Wow -- how long since I have heard "60's" talk that's so right?! Talk that recognizes our humanity and says that we are not just cogs in a corporate machine. Who talks about these things today?

A few years ago, when Jerry was running for Attorney General, I wrote,

I've loved Jerry Brown since his 1992 campaign for President. During that campaign he proposed boosting the economy and helping the energy/pollution/Middle East problem with a national program to hire unemployed people to retrofit buildings to be energy efficient. Imagine if we had done that! So now 13 years later we have the Apollo Alliance but Jerry doesn't seem to get much credit for being so far ahead on this.

A few years before that I wrote,

In the 1992 campaign Jerry Brown made a suggestion that I haven't forgotten. He suggested putting the unemployed to work retrofitting buildings and homes to be energy efficient. It requires an up-front investment but it returns a more efficient economy (everyone paying less for energy) and national energy independence as a foreign policy bonus. Meanwhile all those unemployed people are getting and spending paychecks, boosting the economy. It helps everyone but the oil companies. Oh. I guess not, then.

I don’t know right now if Brown can or should win and this is not an endorsement. But I think this is a conversation that we all need to have and learn from.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:03 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 22, 2009

Fraught With Meaning

Headline at Drudge Report: "Why does Obama smile at dictators?"

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:33 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

April 12, 2009

Obama's Deficits

1) The current massive budget deficit is Obama's fault, not the Republicans', because Obama has been president for ten weeks.

2) The massive spending on unemployment compensation and food stamps is Obama's responsibility, not the Republicans', because Obama has been president for ten weeks.

3) By the same token, the massive spending on bailing out and backing up the financial system is Obama's responsibility, not the Republicans', because Obama has been president for ten weeks.

Discuss.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:01 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

March 20, 2009

Obama - Two Months

President Obama was sworn in two months ago. Here's a short clip from Media matters about the "honeymoon" he enjoyed:

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:56 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

March 14, 2009

Is President Obama A Socialist?

Is President Obama a "socialist?"

During the campaign this accusation was everywhere. According to Google there are currently 4,700,000 sites on the web with the words "Obama" and "Socialist." A couple of pre-election examples: Obama’s International Socialist Connections "Blogger Steve Bartin, who has been following Obama's career and involvement with the Chicago socialists, has uncovered a fascinating video showing Obama campaigning for openly socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.", Is Obama a socialist? "Obama has declared that he believes every person has a "right" to health care. The Socialist Party USA believes every person has a "right" to health care."

As silly as those pre-election accusations were, now it is Republican leaders making the claim that President Obama is a socialist,

Obama's plans are "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment," asserts House minority leader John Boehner. He's "the world's best salesman of socialism," says Republican Senator Jim DeMint.

Never mind that Republicans don't even know that "socialism" means public ownership of the means of production, operated for the benefit of society and the people-at-large instead of for the profit of a select few. Of course, no one is talking about that, not even the Republicans making the direct "socialist" accusations. They mean something they call "European-style socialism,"

The five-term Republican said that he has gotten praise from his constituents for opposing the stimulus and warned that the country may succumb to "European-style socialism."

As we all know, when Republicans get on a talking point, they all get on it, almost as if someone were telling them to. Other examples of recent Republican accusations that Obama is taking us to "European-style socialism," here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and I'm only stopping because my fingers are getting tired.

So, let's take a look at whether Obama meets the Republican definition of a "European-style socialist" by comparing what we have in the U.S. to some of the things that "socialist" Europe offers to its citizens: (Note - Europe is not socialist...)

National health care system assuring every citizen has equal access to quality care? NO.

Five-six weeks mandatory vacation for everyone? NO.

Extended maternal leave for new parents? NO.

Day care provided for children? NO.

Fair(er) wages for all workers? NO.

Shorter, less stressful working hours? NO.

More even distribution of the benefits of the economy? NO.

Government services for citizens instead of a select few. NO.

Retirement at a relatively young age? NO.

Retirement with a good pension? NO.

Citizens having a say in how the economy is managed? NO.

Citizens protected from predatory corporations? NO.

So, even though the accusation was absurd on the face of it, even comparing Obama's policies to some of the "socialist" things offered to the people in Europe, Obama is not a socialist.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:54 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

February 27, 2009

Senator calls Obama 'world’s best salesman of socialism'

For the second time in as many days, a prominent Republican has likened Pres. Obama's policies to socialism.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Another prominent Republican told the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday that the president’s spending plans are pushing the country to the brink of socialism.

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the only member of the senate to earn a perfect rating from the American Conservative Union, called President Obama “the world’s best salesman of socialism” on Friday in describing his prime time speech earlier this week.
................

Socialism is the new GOP meme word for the successful execution of democracy in America by the people.

The strategy is brilliant and the Dems are clueless as to how to respond, and in fact have been caught flat footed.

The GOP machine has won another important battle on another important front in the war to control the terms of the discussion.

Posted by Ron Sheridan at 10:43 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

February 7, 2009

Say Anything Is Back

Republicans are back to a 'say anything' policy. The more outrageous the lie, the more effect it has on their audience.

WorldNetDaily headline, huge, bold letters: Stimulus to ban religious worship

Another: Stimulus could supply illegals with 300,000 jobs

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:25 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

January 22, 2009

NEVER Enough For The Wingnuts

Yesterday in Wingnuts Can Relax I wrote,

The right-wing clownosphere was trying to claim that Obama is not really President because the Chief Justice screwed up the Oath of Office. So, to shut them up, Obama takes presidential oath again after stumble

Not so fast. SCREAMING HEADLINE at Drudge Report:
NO BIBLE USED AT OBAMA RE-SWEAR

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:17 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

January 21, 2009

Wingnuts Can Relax

The right-wing clownosphere was trying to claim that Obama is not really President because the Chief Justice screwed up the Oath of Office. So, to shut them up, Obama takes presidential oath again after stumble.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:18 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

November 4, 2008

Mandate For Socialism!

John McCain and the Republicans and the entire conservative machine told the country that Barack Obama is a socialist and the most liberal member of the Senate, and the country responded by voting the guy into office in a landslide.

So we have a huge popular mandate for socialism and extreme liberalism.

Finally.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:46 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

The Guy In The Black Panther Costume

For the heck of it I turned on FOX News. They've got a guy dressed up in a Black panther costume standing out in front of a polling place in Philadelphia. It's hilarious.

And they're running with this over and over, and they have commentators on talking about it, and this is their big Election-Day national news story. NATIONAL!

They get a guy to dress up in a Black Panther costume and they can run with that ALL DAY???

The fear is just palpable. The terror.

I'm already duct-taping all my windows.

Update - Oh my God, they've got this headlined at Drudge! They get a guy dressed up in a Black Panther costume, a few days after Halloween, and they try to make this a national news hissy fit! I'm afraid to check the right-wing blogs.

Update - Yep, no fewer than 30 right-wing outlets are headlining this NATIONAL story, that a guy dressed up in a Black Panther costume is standing in front of a polling place somewhere. (I only referenced some of them here.)

Update - Of course, Limbaugh ran with it, a guy dressed up in a Black panther costume, for his millions of fans...

SERIOUSLY stuck in the 60's!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 31, 2008

McCain Robo-Call Script Ideas The Were Rejected

McCain's Rejected Robo-Call Scripts,

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama talks during movies. During a recent screening of The Dark Knight, Barack Obama irritated several pro-America patrons when he echoed the famous 'Why so serious?' line to his wife, Michelle, who hasn't always been proud of being an American, much like the Joker. ...

and,

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama doesn't use his turn signal when he merges onto a freeway.

There's much more, go read.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:45 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

October 29, 2008

One Of The Worst?

This is one -- just one -- of the sleaziest Republican smear/deceit ads this year. Sen. Dole in North Carolina hires a voice impersonator to sound like her opponent, to say "There is no God" in an ad, saying her opponent "took godless money."

Wow. That's really creepy. And Sen. Dole apparently thinks North Carolina voters are really, really stupid. Is she right?

One thing that comes out of this election: I think it has become pretty obvious what the Republican Party is about. They say nasty and things to trick people who don't follow the news into voting for them, and then they hand over public money to a few wealthy corporation owners who fund all of this.

I think people are starting to become well-enough aware of this game to start doing something about it. ONE thing would be to stop allowing a few people to use corporate resources to influence our politics. It isn't corporations that are the problem, it is this abiloity of a few people to access corporate resources and use them to subvert democracy.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 22, 2008

Race Boating

Great name for what the Republicans are doing: Race Boating.

Go read Open Left:: Race Boating: Swift Boat Backer Funds Racist Mail.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:38 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 18, 2008

Video On McCain Robocall Smears

This video plays one of the nasty smear robocalls that McCain and the Republicans are blasting around the country in these days before the election. Obama is a terrorist, etc.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:59 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Election - Final Stretch

We're about to see the full force power and fury of the right-wing machine unleashed. I'm not so sure Obama will keep his lead through the next phase, or if there will be a country when they're done.

The RNC and the McCain campaign has been accusing Obama and Democrats of being "un-American" or "anti-American" and "dangerous" and "terrorists" and anything they can think of. Today McCain said Obama's tax policies are "Socialist." Across the country the first phase of robo-calls has started, with nasty smears, lies, fear-mongering and you-name-it being pumped into people's homes at all hours.

It is only going to get worse. And then it will get worse. And then it will get really nasty. The next two weeks will go down in history. The corporate right faces the prospect of the people bringing them back under control, and a look at where all the money went. The authoritarian right faces investigations for torture and war crimes. The party operatives face jail time for illegal politicization of the entire government. They will not go without a huge fight.

I really don't know where things will go in the next two weeks, but keep up your spirits, and fight back.

And, of course, watch your backs.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:31 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

October 17, 2008

Republican Persecution Lust

Republicans want everyone to feel sorry for them all the time. They lust to feel persecuted. Here's an example. Some 7th-graders call another 7th-grader a racist. This brings headlines across the Republican universe. Featured at Fox and Drudge, echoed within minutes across the right-wing whine machine:

Girl called racist for wearing Palin t-shirt,

She's only 12 years old but Ashleigh Jones is feeling the heat of this election year.

That’s because the seventh grader at New Smyrna Beach Middle School was called a racist by classmates for wearing a pro-Sarah Palin t-shirt.

Oh poor, poor, picked-on Republicans. I weep for their sacrifice.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 14, 2008

Tell McCain Palin To Stop Using Politics Of Hate

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 12, 2008

More Threats To Kill Obama

This is at a popular right-wing blog. Warning you will need a strong stomach to see this. It is a photo of Obama and a noose and the words "The F**king Solution" - and more, with the usual nasty right-wing victim-complex justifications, all followed by some really nasty comments frok readers. Just go see for yourself.

Update It was removed there, but it is still up here. Update - It's gone there too. Good riddance. Also, I have learned that the one posted at Say Anything was a reader blog, and not from the bloggers at that site. I want to point that out, the blog itself was not responsible.

Update - The whole thing is covered here.

The original post continues:

This had better get the Secret Service involved fast.

And just to document where this stuff is heading, this at Fox news Forums, whipping people up that Obama is rigging the election by accusing ACORN of "vote fraud" even though there has never been a single fraudulent vote cast as a result of voter-registration mistakes.

It makes your everyday smear look almost trivial...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:13 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Palin's Accusation That Obama is A Terrorist

Sarah Palin repeatedly accuses Obama of having various "ties" to terrorists, and pretty buch of being a terrorist himself.

Remember the Seeing the Forest Rule: When Republicans Accuse it is a good idea to see if it is what THEY are really doing. The accusation serves as an inoculation. It works like this: Billy steals a cookie from the cookie jar. Billy runs to mommy and tells her Bobby took a cookie. Bobby responds with "No, mommy, Billy did it." This gets Bobby is serious trouble, and Billy gets away scott-free -- plus a cookie.

So of course an investigation into Sarah Palin reveals ... you guessed it. A DailyKos post explains, and David Neiwert has a summary at his blog:
# That Gov. Palin, when a Wasilla city council member, formed an alliance with some of the more radical far-right citizens in Wasilla and vicinity, particularly members of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party who were allied with local John Birch Society activists. These activists played an important role in her election as Wasilla mayor in 1996.

# Once mayor, one of Mrs. Palin’s first acts was to attempt to appoint one of these extremists (a man named Steve Stoll) to her own seat on the city council. This was a man with a history of disrupting city council meetings with intimidating behavior. She was blocked by a single city council member.

# Afterward, Mrs. Palin fired the city’s museum director at the behest of this faction.

# She fomented an ultimately successful effort to derail a piece of local gun-control legislation which would simply have prohibited the open carry of firearms into schools, liquor stores, libraries, courthouses and the like. The people recruited to shout this ordinance down included these same figures, notably the local AIP representative (who became the AIP’s chairman that same year).

# She remained associated politically with the local AIP/Birch faction throughout her tenure as mayor on other issues, particularly a successful effort to amend the Alaska Constitution to prohibit local governments from issuing any local gun-control ordinances.

But really, what did you expect?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 10, 2008

How Low Can McCain Go?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

WHY Are Republicans Accusing ACORN Of Voter Fraud?

The Republican noise machine is going absolutely full-force after ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), accusing them of committing vote fraud on a massive scale. You can't turn on the radio or TV without hearing that millions of illegal votes will be cast for Obama because of ACORN's massive vote fraud. If you Google "Acorn" and "rigging" you get over 50,000 hits.

The Republican National Committee website is headlining the effort. And they are issuing accusation press releases all day, every day, to drive this effort. They have a "fact sheet" listing numerous accusations.

Here's the thing: ACORN is registering voters and is REQUIRED BY LAW to submit voter reg forms as the voter fills them out. Even so, the total "fraudulent" registrations they are accused of submitting nationwide is very low, maybe a few thousand. This is across the entire country when they have registered more than 1.3 million new voters. And this is all about registration forms that are filled out wrong by the voter, not ACORN, or a voter submitting more than one registration. This is what all the noise is about.

This is the key thing to know: None of these faulty registrations are capable of resulting in a single fraudulent vote. The problem is ACORN workers turning in forms that were filled out wrong, in some cases by the workers themselves to make it look like they were working when they weren't. But vote fraud? The most common problems is duplication but if someone fills out 12 registrations, they're still only goign to vote once. It is up to county election officials, not ACORN to worry about election fraud. And on a call today with ACORN they pointed out that while there are bad registration forms submitted, there is not one case of a person commiting actual vote fraud as a result of ACORN's efforts. Not one, ever, anywhere.

So the question is, why? Why the huge hissy fit over ACORN?

Remember the Seeing the Forest Rule: When Republicans accuse, it is because it is what they are doing themselves.

Working on the Election Protection Wiki I am seeing more and more accusations of a massive nationwide effort to throw millions of voters off of the registration lists, and otherwise keep them from voting. One example accusation: states like Florida are purging voters whose names do not exactly match their Social Security or drivers license, so "Bob" on one and "Robert" on another disqualifies them from voting. Another, across the country the Republicans are accused of mailing faulty absentee voter applications to Democrats -- they have incorrect addresses for sending the application, or when they can send them in they are thrown out for various reasons to do with the forms. Another: across the country students are being told they can't vote. These are just a few examples -- you may have heard that some states are even throwing people off voter registration roles if their homes are foreclosed.

Could THIS be why there are so many accusations against ACORN? To provide cover for the REAL voting scam that is going on?

Among the accusations is that they have "employed convicts to register people." That sure SOUNDS bad, but so what? Also among the crimes they are accused of is submitting duplicate registrations for voters. Here is the thing to keep in mind, when a duplicate registration is submitted, the person is registered once and the duplicates are thrown out. Again, so what?

ACORN is an organization that helps poor and minority communities. One thing ACORN does is organize people to vote. They have submitted over 1.3 million new voter registrations this year. From their website,

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities.

This sounds exactly like something Repubicans would hate. A lot.

Among the hundreds and hundreds of stories, these today:

ACORN Investigations Provide Rallying Cry for Republicans

Is Acorn Stealing the Election?

Obama Hired ACORN For GOTV

It’s time to shut down ACORN, work against voter fraud

GOP Renews Complaints Over Voter Registrations

ACORN’s Crimes

RNC: CNN Exposes How ACORN Steals Votes & Ties to Obama

Jive Turkey Rides Again

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:23 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 9, 2008

Obama, ACORN, Terrorist, Etc

McCain supporters:

This is a window into the next several years if McCain becomes President.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:04 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 7, 2008

McCain Sows, Reaps

McCain pretends Obama "associates" with terrorists. So after McCain opened the idea of associations, the press looked at McCain. The result? An AP report: McCain linked to group in Iran-Contra affair,

In the 1980s, McCain served on the advisory board to the U.S. chapter of an international group linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America.

[. . .] McCain's tie to Singlaub's council is undergoing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Obama for his link to Ayers, a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:41 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Cultivating Prejudice, Racism, Fear and Ugliness

At their rallies McCain and Palin have been encouraging the worst from the Republican base. Accusations of "palling around with terrorists" and causing the financial crisis, and you-name-it they're accusing. Jack Turner says what needs to be said, at Jack & Jill Politics,

Everything we need to know about John McCain and Sarah Palin is summed up by their reaction to these incidents. Their positions on health care no longer matter. Their tax policies are irrelevant. Their talking points made moot. Not only do they bring out the worst in people, but they feed the worst in people. They are basing their campaign on painting Obama as a terrorist and monster. They are cultivating prejudice, racism, fear and ugliness.

America has been down this path before, and it is the exact opposite of what this country needs right now.

History awaits moments like these. We are on the brink. When a society’s pent up frustration and anger searches for an outlet, it is a leader’s job to step up and focus those wild emotions away from destruction and toward something productive. At least that is what a good leader would do. [emphasis added]

Go read the rest.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:51 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 6, 2008

Palin Gets The Reaction She's Trying For

"Kill him!", Palin supporter says of Obama in her presence. She says nothing.,

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.

"Boooo!" said the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Palin went on to say that "Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers's living room, and they've worked together on various projects in Chicago."

Go read the rest. Wow.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 5, 2008

Palin's Traitor Accusation

Palin says Obama is a traitor. So maybe it's worth pointing out that Palin is associated with groups that hate America enough to call for dissolving it.

Yes, as weird and extreme as it sounds, it is really the truth. Her husband, for example, is a member of one such "secessionist" group that talks about "hatred" of America. I used the word "hatred" in quotes because it is a quote. Remember the Seeing the Forest Rule: When Republicans accuse, it usually means it is something THEY are doing.

Palin's Attack On Obama's Patriotism Legitimizes Questions About The Palins' Association With Group Founded By America-Hating Secessionist

Sarah Palin attacked Obama's patriotism today over his association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers -- a move that makes it perfectly legitimate to raise questions about the Palins' associations with a group founded by an Alaska secessionist who once professed his "hatred for the American government" and cursed our "damn flag."

Go read the rest.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Obama Response To Latest Smears

The Republicans are again trying to change the subject away from the economy and scare people into thinking Obama is a "terrorist." The Obama campaign has a great response:

Will it work?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:41 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

October 4, 2008

Palin Calls Obama A Terrorist, Traitor

Here it comes, the desperate horror show of an imploding Republican Party -- just in time for Halloween. Palin says Obama 'palling around' with terrorists

Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Palin, Alaska's governor, said that donors on a greeting line had encouraged her and McCain to get tougher on Obama. She said an aide then advised her, "Sarah, the gloves are off, the heels are on, go get to them."

So they're trying to trigger some of the far-right crazies to go after Obama. This is going to get much worse in the next month as the election approaches.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:49 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

September 28, 2008

What Caused the Financial Crisis?

There are several letters-to-the-editor and TWO op-eds in my morning paper saying that the cause of the financial crisis was Democrats forcing Fannie and Freddie to give mortgages to minorities.

It's everywhere. All over the radio, right-wing blogs, etc. This is how they do it.

P.S. And while we are on the subject of how they do it, an e-mail I just received from the "Republican Majority Campaign" titled, "Truth is Spreading about Obama's Ties to Terrorist!"

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:19 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

September 26, 2008

Racism On RW Blogs

Wow. The RW blogs are over the edge, and it's still, what, about 40 days till the election? Take a look at this one:

... Barack Obama Attacked White People! ... Barack Obama was moved to tears when he heard his racist anti-American pastor blame whitey for all of the world's pain and ills. ... Here Barack Obama lashes out at the white man's greed ...

Sigh...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:08 AM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

September 17, 2008

Republicans and Blatant Racism

If you know what Townhall.com is... Townhall.com :: Obama: Lucifer Is My Homeboy

So... do you think clean campaigner McCain will denounce this?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:37 PM | Comments (1) | Link Cosmos

September 14, 2008

McCain Campaign Lie Strategy - Will It Work?

The McCain campaign is being called out on some of the lies they have been telling. The campaign spokesman says that they are in this to win and don't care what the "media filter" says.

I think we will get a test of their theory that the "media filter" doesn't matter anymore. This is to a large degree about who controls the information channels now. The conservative movement has been building to this with their well-funded "liberal media" campaign. They have they're mouthpieces like Rush constantly telling his audience not to ever believe the media. The right has a very large following. The result is that most of the public believes that the major news media is a propaganda machine for liberals and should not be trusted.

And they have the advantage that repetition of messages does work. They are running ads that say Obama will raise your taxes, force sex talk on your kindergartners and all that stuff -- even one that says Obama is the anti-Christ. They have the money to run those ads over and over on shows that lots of people watch. And they have the wealthy and corporate-backed front groups running ads and robo-calls and smear campaigns, etc. against Obama. People don't necessarily watch or believe mainstream news, but they will see these ads again and again.

So do the authoritarian conservatives have the power to override facts and "create their own reality" as they did in the lead-up to the Iraq war? I really don't know the answer and wouldn't bet my house on it either way.

Remember, tobacco company marketing is able to get people to kill themselves, but to hand over much of their money in the process. Modern marketing methods can convince almost anyone to do or believe almost anything.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 10, 2008

Republicans Just Lie -- It's What They Do

Why are Republicans just saying so much stuff that is not true? Because it works. From April 2005, They Just Say Stuff,

They say what they need to say to make the sale. If the focus groups and polls tell them to say something, they say it. That's all t is. Truth is just not a part of the calculation.

July, 2005: Seeing the Forest: Focus Group Phrases vs Reality

So here is how it works. The right-wingers hold focus groups and ask, "if we told you so-and-so, would you believe such-and-such?" And then they go out and spread the so-and-so, whatever it is, in their effort to persuade people to believe such-and-such. They find out that people don't like "activist judges," or at least react negatively to the phrase, and know that they are going to be appointing judges who are activist, so they repeat that Liberals appoint activist judges in order to get that fixed in the public's mind.

And they follow a strategy of first getting people to believe one thing, and then building on that by adding new elements that depend on the belief they previously established. This is a strategic narrative. It unfolds into a story. "Liberal activist judges" is part of an unfolding narrative of "liberals' meddling with people's daily lives. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth, but it is useful for persuading people to support right-wingers.

October, 2005, Yes, This Is The First Time In Three Decades That Republicans Were Hypocrites. Right.

It's what they do. What they said an hour ago is not relevant - it's what they needed to say then, and that was then. When they need to do something else they willl. They'll just make stuff up, lie and smear people. They'll ask focus groups if they would be against Democrats if they learned that Democrats eat dog toenails on Yugoslavian yogurt at tea time, and if the focus groups said that would turn them against Democrats, we would start hearing that Democrats eat dog toenails on Yugoslavian yogurt at teatime, and we'll hear it on the radio, and in newspapers (incuding the one that published the story referred to above), and on TV and in magazines and in anonymous e-mails, and from friends, and soon "everyone knows" that Democrats do that. And it will work. It's what they do.

So what are we expecting today -- different?

As long as We, the People let this stuff work there is no reason for them to stop.

Never mind the consequences: war, ten trillion dollars in debt, the financial system breaking down, the ice caps melting, people losing pensions and health care and houses and jobs... Look away! Never mind that! Obama tried to force kindergartners to take sex education --- even if he didn't.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:15 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Obama: Enough is Enough

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

Lies Beyond Even Bush

Reagan picked up where Nixon left off, with no apologies. Bush I picked up from there. And then George W. Bush was literally a corporate coup taking on democracy itself. But McCain? The campaign HE is running? The absolute lies? It's beyond even George W Bush!

Josh Marshall, Unfit for High Office,

It's easy to get twisted up in your head about strategy and message and optics. But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let's stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We've got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They've both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.

Update - Andrew Sullivan:

In the end, his [McCain's] final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. ...

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:15 AM | Comments (3) | Link Cosmos

September 9, 2008

Spinspotter - I Don't Trust It

When you start hearing about Spinspotter, be careful. It appears to be a set-up from a bunch of right wingers. So they're just going to say that "the media has a liberal bias."

Maybe I can be persuaded different, but working with Jonah Goldberg, the CEO of Pajamas Media and people who gave money to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a tip-off that they are either another front group or too naive to understand how the right works and will be co-opted. They have immediately discredited themselves coming out the door.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:42 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 5, 2008

Palin -- Great Leap Forward for GOP

Sarah Palin has singlehandedly dragged the image of the Republican party ahead forty years -- into the 1990s.

She comes straight out of Newt Gingrish's GOPAC, the right-wing candidate recruitment organization that introduced all the nasty insults and divisiveness that poisoned politics starting in the late 1980s and continued through the 1990s up to now. I mean literally. She IS from GOPAC and GOPAC is the organization that taught up and coming Republicans to use nasty, snide, hateful language to smear their opponents.

Often we search hard for words to help us define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

decay... failure (fail)... collapse(ing)... deeper... crisis... urgent(cy)... destructive... destroy... sick... pathetic... lie... liberal... they/them... unionized bureaucracy... "compassion" is not enough... betray... consequences... limit(s)... shallow... traitors... sensationalists...

That's right, the advice is to just say stuff that isn't true but sounds nasty. Follow the link to see more.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:20 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

September 3, 2008

WHO Said That?

I keep hearing that "liberals" have been saying that a woman with five kids won't have time to also have a job.

Can anyone point me to anyone, anywhere who ever said that about Palin? Or are they just making it up, the way they do, to make their base feel picked on?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:28 PM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 28, 2008

Please Go See Media Matters Swiftboating 2.0 Page

Click through to Swiftboating 2.0. There is an incredible chart that outlines the right's attack strategy on Obama.

As the means of communication have evolved, presidential campaigns have grown increasingly multifaceted, with each election featuring layers of complexity that were not present four years before. The most striking feature of the 2008 election may be the sheer volume and variation of the attacks being directed at Sen. Barack Obama. Though they come from many sources, arrive through a variety of media, and cover a wide range of subjects, a close examination reveals a unified thematic structure to these attacks.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | Link Cosmos

August 8, 2008

Quoting KKK Leaders Against Obama

Now the right is promoting the quotes of KKK leaders against Obama. And it's only August.

A headline at Drudge Report: Ex-KKK Leader: Obama Shows Whites 'Have Lost Control' Of America...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

August 3, 2008

Does McCain's Ad Imply Obama Is Anti-Christ?

The other day I sent people to read about how people are reacting to McCain's ad "The One." I decided to look around the web and see what is circulating about Obama. Well, these people are serious. I posted several links below so you can just go see for yourself. SOME parts of the religious right are serious about this idea that Obama is the "anti-Christ."

In my opinion, the McCain people simply have to know about the stuff that is circulating. If you read some of the stuff you realize that McCain's ad parallels it very closely. It says some of the very same things that the nuts are circulating. So if you are one of the nuts who believes this, you have received validation from the McCain campaign. There is no way around it that the ad is saying to the people receiving the anti-Christ rumors, "Hey, we're with you, we see it, too." It makes you wonder if McCain is trying to provoke the crazies into doing something to Obama.

So here is some of the stuff that is out there. Hold your nose, and be sure to read some of the comments at some of these sites.

Email circulating:

Yahaim wrote:
Obama is the Anti-Christ. This is the evidence:
1.- He will come as a man of Peace (Obama promises peace in Iraq, defeat for the US)
2.- He will come mounted on a white Female horse(Obama mother is white who had 6 African husbands)
3.- He will come to deceive( Obama says he's a Christian but in fact he was born a Muslim, practices the Islamic religion, prays Friday’s facing Mecca)
4.- He will make himself the most powerful man on earth, if elected
5.- He will try to destroy the Jewish People and Israel( Obama has said he loves the Arabs specially the Palestinians, hates Israel and Jews. Admires Hitler, Osama etc)
6.- He will present himself as good and righteous but in fact he's Satan himself. Violence is in his heart
7.- Obama will help Al Qaida in its evil projects.
8.- Barack Hussein Obama is the “King of the South” predicted in the Bible.(Daniel .11, Kenya is south of Jerusalem)
9.- Obama comes to implant muslim Sharia Law upon America.
Obama is the Anti-Christ, beware of him.
Watch him and don't let you be deceived by Him.
Supporters of Obama: 1.5 billion Muslims, Oprah, Louis Farrakanh, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and all American Muslims.
OBAMA’S GAME IS DECEPTION AND VIOLENCE
A VOTE FOR OBAMA IS A VOTE FOR OSAMA AND KILLER ISLAM!!

Barack Obama, Anti-Christ? (be sure to read through some of the 850+ comments)

I’m not the first one to say it, but after recently reading the beginning of the Left Behind series and the entire Christ Clone trilogy, it’s not totally wacky to compare Obama’s rise and public adulation to that of the predicted Anti-Christ’s (at least as described in those books).

Hal Lindsey at WorldNetDaily (right-wing religious types take him seriously): How Obama prepped world for the Antichrist

Could Presidential Candidate Barack Hussein Obama be the "Anti-Christ?"

Do you think Obama is the antichrist?

Barack Obama the Antichrist?

Is Barack Hussein Obama the AntiChrist?

Obama The Antichrist? Hmm.

The Liberal's Agenda - Antichrist or just anti-Christ?

Email circulating:

According to The Book of Revelations, the anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal…. the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything ….

Is it OBAMA?? I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet…do it!

Glenn Beck: 'Is Obama the Antichrist?'

Is Barack Obama the Anti-Christ?

Other progressive bloggers are writing about this:

DailyKos: Obama as Forerunner to the Anti-Christ

DailyKos: McCain's Left Behind Attack

Discourse.net: New Low For McCain Campaign: Obama == The Anti-Christ

BeliefNet: New McCain Ad Implies Obama is the Anti-Christ?

Sadly, No! The Ol’ Dog Whistle Becomes An Air Raid Siren

Blog for Our Future: The Second Coming of Barack Obama

Street Prophets: New McCain Ad Depicts Obama As The Anti-Christ

Here are some of the videos circulating:

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:50 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

August 1, 2008

Obama As Anti-Christ Smear

Just read it: Daily Kos: Obama as Forerunner to the Anti-Christ

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

The Race Card

We learned this week that the McCain campaign had two ads ready to roll after Obama's European trip. There was the one they ran, accusing Obama of playing basketball instead of visiting injured troops -- and the one they didn't run accusing Obama of visiting injured troops for political purposes.

This indicates the extent to which the McCain campaign is planning ahead, intending to play both sides of everything. And it reveals something important about yesterday's accusation by McCain that Obama is "playing the race card." It suggests that the recent racist "celebrity" ads linking Obama and white women were intended to trigger a response from Obama, so they could make this "race card" accusation.

Enabling this "race card" accusation was the real intent of the ads. This "race card" accusation lets McCain appear to be the victim while he runs racist ads. It's a twofer.

Think about the meaning of "playing the race card." The accusation that blacks "play the race card" taps into and amplifies working-class white resentment. It says that black people receive special treatment, have it easy, don't have to work, get government handouts from liberals, while the politically-correct crowd jumps all over you just for trying to point out their true nature.

Accusing Obama of "playing the race card" goes back to the old racist line that black people are always complaining, nothing is good enough for them, and if white pepole try to get what's theirs blacks will play the race card" and say you are taking from them because of their race.

This is only August and McCain's campaign is working hard to divide us and inspire hatred. It is going to get a lot worse.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 31, 2008

McCain The Victim

Did you notice how skillfully they made McCain the victim? McCain runs nasty racist ads, Obama says one thing about it, and they pounce with the prepared line about Obama "playing the race card."

Saying a black man is "playing the race card" is, of course, racist, but who's counting? Those yuppity negroes just everything handed to them.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 30, 2008

Republican Party Pushing "Who Sent Obama?" Smear

The other day I wrote about a coming "Who Sent Obama" smear campaign. Here is an official Republican Party website that advances this smear: BarackBook

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 21, 2008

"Who Sent You?" -- The Coming Attack on Obama

At least one major right-wing smear attack on Obama may be gearing up. I'll call it the "Who Sent You" campaign. As weird as it sounds -- and it is weird stuff -- the gist of it is that Obama's birth was part of a secret plan by communists, Jews and one-worlders to take over the world. As you read this it is going to sound so fanatically wingnut/John Birch Society/black helicopter/precious bodily fluids weird that you are likely to dismiss it as the rantings of crazy people. But I have learned over the years that this stuff resonates with a certain crowd, and they are remarkably effective at tapping the fears of Americans.

Keep in mind how weird and unbelievable the Swift Boat accusations seemed -- and remember the powerful effect they had on the public and election results. In The Swiftboaters Are Back in the Water I wrote about the effectiveness of the dishonest accusations,

. . . [one] reason it works is because it is (excuse the pun) offensive. They say that the best defense is a good offense, and considering their candidates, the Republicans certainly needed a defense.

[. . .] So with swiftboating you spread a smear to raise questions with the public about the opponent's patriotism or service. It doesn't have to be true (how quaint) it just has to raise questions. This "neutralizes" the honorable record of or otherwise "discredits" the advantages that opponent has against a Republican with a poor (like George W. Bush's) or no (like Saxby Chambliss or any number of other "chickenhawks") record.

That post also cited the following description of the results of that smear:

"A recent University of Pennsylvania poll showed that its attack ad questioning whether Kerry deserved his medals had been seen or heard of by half the voters questioned.

It also revealed that 44 per cent of independent voters found the advert at least somewhat believable. Meanwhile a CBS poll showed the number of veterans who supported Kerry had dropped from 46 per cent to 37 per cent." [emphasis added]

This effect increased as the election approached.

And here we are again. The widely-spread, widely-repeated -- and consequently widely believed -- smear emails about Obama being a secret Muslim who went to a terrorist training school, burned his flag pin etc. have been "preparing the ground" by "raising questions" that get people ready to give a positive reception to this conspiracy theory. I am seeing signs that the wingnuts are starting to roll out the next phase with the right's recent "Obama forged birth certificate" blogswarm, with stories like this from Christian Web News,

In response to mounting media questions about the failure of the Barack Obama presidential campaign to produce his birth certificate, an official spokesman of the campaign has endorsed as genuine the image of a document purporting to be his "birth certificate." However, experts who have examined that image in high resolution have pointed out inconsistencies and irregularities which suggest that the document is a forgery.

The idea behind this is that Obama was really born in Kenya (in a lab, perhaps?), and was later "smuggled" into Hawaii. From FINAL REPORT ON OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FORGERY,

It is irrefutable, empirical evidence - Obama's birth certificate is a forgery. Why? Why a COLB (certificate of live birth) forgery? That is the question.

Who Exactly is Obama? from Right Side News, drives home the paranoia:

If elected, he would be the first Arab-American President, not the first black President. Barack Hussein Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother's side and 43.75% Arabic and 6.25% African Negro from his father's side. While Barack Hussein Obama's father was from Kenya, his father's family was mainly Arabs.. Barack Hussein Obama's father was only 12.5% African Negro and 87.5% Arab.

There are already thousands of references to this weird story on the web.

With all of that as background, here is what I think is an upcoming smear attack that will be echoed across the right's communication channels. In February, The Corner at National Review Online posted Obama's Political Origins.

. . . all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League.

. . . I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama's family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual.

. . . Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student.

This story refers to this from Accuracy in Media, Obama’s Communist Mentor,

In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit." But what about Obama's secret political life? It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.

[. . .] Obama's communist connection adds to mounting public concern about a candidate who has come out of virtually nowhere, with a brief U.S. Senate legislative record, to become the Democratic Party frontrunner for the U.S. presidency.

. . . AIM recently disclosed that Obama has well-documented socialist connections, which help explain why he sponsored a "Global Poverty Act" designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, in order to meet U.N. demands

I suspect this "he came out of nowhere" idea is going to be repeated over and over. It has a "don't trust him" insinuation that feels like it will stick in certain brains. It lends credence to the really weird stuff that I see bubbling up in the right's channels. An example of what is coming can be found in this "PUMA Blog Network" blog "It's The Communism Stupid" titled, Obama Socialist Trojan Horse and Hive Builder. Hear the Buzzing?

Is Obama a Marxist/Stalinist Trojan Horse…..a Marxist Mole?

How else is one to explain this candidate who came out of nowhere and since 1996 and involvement with the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, he has been able to “leap” every three years up the power ladder…..looking for the GOLD Ring of being the most powerful person in the United States?Going back to his roots we find:

1.His father, from Kenya was a Socialist and wrote papers relating to the oppression of the people of Kenya. ...

3.Obama’s grandfather introduced him to Frank Marshall Davis, an activist and poet with ties to the Communist Party. . . .

5.From Occidental College, Obama transferred to Columbia University and majored in political science and international relations.

OK, I admit my favorite is the way this post highlights political science and international relations as proof that something sinister is going on. This is a long, paranoid post (please try to skim it at least) but I am seeing it echoed around the right's networks so you have to take it seriously.

OK, to the the meat of the coming attack. The outlines of it are here in this post, Who "sent" Obama?. I know this is weird stuff, but you can see how this paranoid theme develops if you skim it. It is very difficult to follow the logic, but the claim appears to be that Obama is the product of a secret cabal connected to Stalinist-Maoist-Che Guevara-Hugo Chavez communists. So take a look (again, my apologies, it's weird.)

So it is reasonable to ask, who "sent" Barack Obama? In other words, how can his meteoric rise to political prominence be explained?

[. . .] The people linked to Senator Obama grew to political maturity in the extreme wings of the late 60s student and antiwar movements. They adopted some of the worst forms of sectarian and authoritarian politics.

... Many of them have joined up with other wings of the late 60s and 70s movements, in particular the pro-China maoists elements of that era and are now playing a role in the labor movement and elsewhere.

. . . The most recent effort was by Jonathan Kaufman in the Wall Street Journal who argued that a critical connection for Obama was his links to some in the wealthy and prominent Jewish community in Chicago.

. . . So, who did “send” Obama? . . . more likely to the family of (in)famous former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – not just Bill Ayers, but also Bill’s father Tom Ayers and his brother John as well.

. . . In my view these types of councils are reminiscent of the manipulative "community" bodies set up in regimes like those of Hugo Chavez and the Sandinistas - used to control genuine democratic movements such as trade unions.

. . . Ayers, of course, had long held what the left once knew, broadly, as “maoist” politics – a view of the world that was opposed to Russian style bureaucratic communism from above, instead advocates of this approach supported sending revolutionary cadre to “swim among the masses like fish in the sea” or attempting to establish guerilla foco as romantically theorized by Regis Debray and carried out with disastrous results by Che Guevara.

[. . .] So, why or how did Obama - at that point not yet the prominent first black president of the Harvard Law Review (that would happen the following year) - end up at Sidley?

Sidley had been long time outside counsel to Commonwealth Edison. The senior Sidley partner who was Comm Ed's key outside counsel, Howard Trienens, was a member of the board of trustees of Northwestern alongside Tom Ayers (and Sidley partner Newton Minow, too). It turns out, Bernardine Dohrn worked at Sidley also. She was hired there in the late 80s, because of the intervention of her father-in-law Tom Ayers, even though she was (and is) not a member of any state bar.

Dohrn ... her former Weather Underground (now recast as the "Revolutionary Armed Task Force") "comrades," including Kathy Boudin (biological mother of Chesa Boudin, who was raised by Ayers and Dohrn) participated. . . . The father of Chesa Boudin, David Gilbert, was sentenced to 75-to-life, with no chance of parole, after a trial in which he refused to participate. Chesa is the co-author of a recent apologia for the regime of Venezuelan "left" strong man, Hugo Chavez.

. . . I can only speculate, but it is possible that Tom Ayers introduced Obama to Sidley. That might have happened if Obama had met up with Bill and Tom and John Ayers prior to attending law school when Obama's DCP group was supporting the reform act passed in 1988. Or it might have been Dohrn who introduced Obama to the law firm.

[. . .] In fact, in retrospect the Ayers/Ayers (business from above, local activism from below) joint campaign against both the Chicago School District bureaucracy and the Teachers Union is reminiscent of the kinds of alliances one finds in neo-stalinist regimes like that of Cuba, China or Sandinista-run Nicaragua. In the Chinese Cultural Revolution, for example, Mao appealed to local activists to attack the party bureaucracy. These authoritarian movements often try to build their power against democratic institutions like unions.

[. . .] As it turns out, there are other ex-SDS types around the Obama campaign as well, including Marilyn Katz, a public relations professional, who was head of security for the SDS during the disaster in the streets of Chicago in 1968.

. . . Davidson and Katz were key organizers of the 2002 anti-war demonstration where Obama made public his opposition to the Iraq war that has been so critical to his successful presidential campaign. Davidson apparently moved into the maoist movements of the 70s after the disintegration of SDS.

... Now that we have some idea of who "sent" Obama, the left and labor movement deserve to know more about how the exhausted ideas of the authoritarian side of 60's politics may still be influencing the thinking of a potential U.S. president. Maybe Andy Stern's endorsement of Obama makes more sense, now.

If you have time, follow the links. They go on and on like that. It seems the idea is if you throw in the words "Maoist" enough times people will get really scared.

I might be right. I might be wrong. But my instincts and experience tell me that this is a smear attack that is bubbling up.

*Let me close with a note on my reference to "precious bodily fluids":

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:18 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 12, 2008

Right Develops Blame Narrative

The right is orchestrating a campaign to blame Democrats for the economic collapse. In cases like this it is often a matter of being the first out there with a story. For example, Progressives and Democrats could have been explaining the economic collapse on the cost of the war, or the huge borrowing that resulted from the tax cuts. But now the right is out there with a story, and the ability to get that story to the public. So we'll see which narrative takes over.

Here's the story. A major bank failed yesterday, and a Bush appointee in the government put out a statement directly blaming Democratic Senator Schumer. So the narrative the right is pumping out is that "the government" says Schumer is at fault for the bank failure. (What Schumer did was say that the bank appears to be insolvent because it was. Republicans say this "caused" a run on the bank. The fact is the bank was closed because it was insolvent, not because people were taking their money out. But facts don't matter.) I suspect you'll be hearing a lot more of this from Limbaugh Monday.

here's a sample of the right's messaging on this:

Senator Schumer Causes Bank Failure

Schumer, whose self-serving publicity hounding is legendary, decided to go public with information that he knew or should have known would be detrimental to the process -- and now he arrogantly refuses to accept any blame for his own politically motivated actions that were the proximate cause of the institution's downfall -- and blames the regulatory process that he created in legislation that he largely wrote back in 1999.

BREAKING: Bank Collapses. Feds cite Sen. Chuck Schumer as "immediate cause" of collapse

Now the question is, did Senator Chuck Schumer cause IndyMac's collapse? The Office of Thrift Supervision, that regulates entities like IndyMac, says "the immediate cause" of IndyMac's collapse was Senator Chuck Schumer.

Chuck Schumer, bank killer,

Two weeks ago, Schumer publicly released a letter he had written to regulatory agencies, demanding action to prevent IndyMac’s collapse. Instead of shoring up the bank, the letter induced depositors to make a run on the bank. Within days, over $1.3 billion in deposits disappeared, forcing the FDIC to close the bank and pay off the insured deposits.

That move cost American taxpayers billions of dollars. Don’t forget to thank Uncle Chuck when you have a chance.

$1.3 billion in losses, brought to you by Chuck Schumer

Maybe, just maybe, things like this could be avoided if the Democrats would stop meddling with the free market. The more Democrats try to interfere with our economy, the more it crashes. And the more it crashes, the more government intervention Democrats think is necessary. And somehow, Americans keep voting Chuck Schumer & Co. into office.

How much money can we afford to lose before we wise up?

Schumered,

LA Times: The chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee caused the second-largest bank collapse in USA history.

... Are Democrats so desperate for power that they are willing to cause bank panics that cost people billions?

Or are they just that incompetent?

... Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer cost the public more than a billion.

Where did the money go?

This casts a huge — $1.3 billion worth — cloud of suspicion over the Democratic Party’s point man in the Senate elections this year.

Update - One more comment: The Fed provides liquidity to banks in this situation. If they are SOLVENT the Fed provides all the cash they need to meet demands of depositors. So a "run" can't cause a bank to close. If they are NOT solvent the FDIC shuts them down right away to prevent a run from draining remaining equity.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:43 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

June 12, 2008

Obama's Fight The Smears Website

Conservatives campaign with smears. It goes back to the days when the tobacco industry was trying to discredit people who said their product was harmful to people. The way they campaign for office is to destroy their opponents rather than make the case for themselves.

They destroy our leaders. And they have been working to destroy Obama with lies and innuendo and smears.

The Obama campaign has launched a website to fight the smears that are circulating: Fight the Smears.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

June 11, 2008

Here It Comes

Professional smears - at far-right Media Research Center. This is from April and you're going to be seeing A LOT of this. Eyeblast.tv - A Video Portrait Of Barack Hussein Obama. (Warning, ugly smear video.)

(via Sideshow)

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

June 9, 2008

Today's Obama Smear Attempt -- See Update

Here's one of the ways the right's smear machine works. Far-right blogs post something. Then a site higher up their food chain picks it up, like NewsMax, CNSNews, WorldNetDaily or Politico. Then the Drudge Report or Moon's Washington Times gets it from there and spreads the story further. Somewhere in there Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity talks about it on the air. Finally the corporate media picks it up and uses the excuse that "the story is circulating."

Here's an example today. "Someone" posted an anti-semitic comment at the Obama blog. (See if you can guess who posted a comment that a right-wing blog knew about a few minutes later.) A few minutes later the hate site Little Green Footballs wrote a post saying that the Obama blog says so-and-so. (If you don't know about this site, spend a few minutes there and you'll get the picture. No, it is not a parody of right-wing nuttiness.) Then dozens of far-right-wing sites quickly echoed the "story." It rapidly turns into a great big right-wing hissy fit.

Soon the right's Politico has picked it up. (Which shows they're spending time reading hate sites.) And then Rush Limbaugh talked about it on his show.

You see, someone (guess who) leaving a comment at the Obama site proves that Obama is anti-semitic. You'll be hearing about it from every direction very soon.

Here is what Politico wrote:

Little Green Footballs finds some eyebrow-raisin stuff on Obama's site with the search term "Jewish Lobby." Of course, it's not fair to hold Obama responsible for the occasional crazy post. But it seems reasonable to try to characterize the community, something I haven't seen done, and it's interesting to see what gets taken down and what doesn't -- inevitably a community and moderator choice.

So bloggers - watch out. Right-wingers are posting vile comments at blogs, and then claiming that blog's readers are saying vile things.

Update - Little Green Footballs is sending people over here to saturate us with nasty comments. This one is an example of what to expect from that site (And I do have the IP address proving who it came from): "It's pretty obvious that Davey is so blind queer for 'the boy with the
pickaninny dick' that he is willing to tell any lie necessary 'for the
cause'...even if it's laughably false on its face...maybe he's bucking to
be Barky's personal bitch faggot....if so,he's doing a good job of it"

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:39 PM | Comments (183) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 29, 2008

skippy Calls For Boycott Of Dunkin Donuts For Appeasing Right-Wing

Right-wing bloggers recently went nuts because a woman in a Dunkin Donuts ad wore a scarf that, if put on her head, might look like a Muslim woman with a scarf on her head. (No, I'm not kidding.) The called for a boycott of Dunkin Donuts.

Dunkin Donuts promptly gave in and canceled the ads. By doing so they demeaned women who wear scarves, not to mention supporting the right-wing blogger claims that a woman wearing a scarf (not even on her head) is a terrorist.

See actual photos here: skippy the bush kangaroo: time to stop buying the donuts - an action alert!,

we say, what's good for the batshit insane is good for the logical.

here's dunkin' donuts contact form. why not email them and let them know that you will no longer be buying their donuts or coffee or any product because their actions, at worst, in effect condemn all who wear scarves, and at best, are just plain looney?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:32 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 20, 2008

How Republicans Campaign

Look at this Republican candidate's ad. Wow. That's some pretty nasty "San Francisco values' there.

Kind of pathetic. But that's what they do.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 19, 2008

All You Need To Know about Republican Accusations

When you are deciding whether to listen to a Republican when they talk about Democrats as "appeasers," consider this. Crooks and Liars has the story of Oliver North on Fox News backing up Republican accusations that Democrats are "appeasers."

So who is Oliver North? Oliver North is the guy that Republican President Ronald Reagan sent to provide weapons and missiles to Iran.

Let me repeat that because many people today are either too young or don't remember what happened in the 1980s. Not long after the Iranians stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took several American diplomats hostage for 444 days, Republicans gave them missiles and other weapons. Oliver North, hero of the American Right and Fox News pundit, gave advanced weaponry to Iran.

And now they call Democrats "appeasers."

It's called the Seeing the Forest Rule: When Republicans accuse others of something, it usually means it is something they are doing. (See also.)

Is there anything else you need to know about Republicans?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 14, 2008

Purity of Essence

"Full-blooded" Americans have purity of essence.

Like I've been saying, the racist attacks are going to get worse and worse. We have stuff like this, and it's only May. By September it will be full-on "mud people" attacks.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 25, 2008

Flag Pins And Hypocrisy

I was thinking about the "flag pin" question, and went and looked at the video. Sure enough, the woman accusing Obama of being unpatriotic for not wearing a flag pin ... wait for it ... isn't wearing a flag pin. The smarmy anchorman implying Obama isn't patriotic for not wearing a flag pin ... guess what ... isn't wearing a flag pin.

And, of course, if you go to Google Images and look for pics of John McCain, none of them show him wearing a flag pin. Of course, that means that Google in unpatriotic.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:50 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

The Republican Plan On Obama -- "Us" vs "Them"

Townhall.com::Is He One of Us?::By Patrick J. Buchanan. Buchanan lays out the basic story that the Republicans are going to try to tell in this campaign. Read the whole thing. Buchanan is telling it like it is for the Republicans, and lays out what they are going to do:

Journalists disagree on whether immigration, Iraq or the economy will be the major issue in 2008. The real issue may be -- and this is what is causing heart palpitations among Democrats -- is Barack Obama one of us, or is he one of them?

This is going to be one nasty, racist, smearing, fear-mongering campaign. It's all they have.

And from the comments:

"Hundreds of white Yankee Soldiers died for freedom for blacks and they never thank anyone."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 24, 2008

McCain And The Smear Ads

John McCain says he can't stop the North Carolina Republican Party and other Republican groups from running ads that smear Barack Obama on race, religion and attack in various other ways. The nominee of the Republican Party says he wants to stop these Republican groups, but can't.

So doesn't this tell us what a McCain administration would be like? Everyone he is supposed to be in charge of will be running around doing whatever they want to do, with McCain saying he can't control them?

Isn't this a reason all by itself to vote against the guy?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 23, 2008

Republicans on Obama -- Yesterday A Gang Member, Today A Terrorist

The Republican campaign is cranking up. Yesterday they were saying that Barack Obama is a gang member. (Black guy, get it?) Today he's a terrorist?

Oh yeah, that's right, last week he was a Communist!

By summer the Republican campaign will be in full swing. I wonder what imaginative things they will come up with?

Too bad the same rules don't apply to McCain.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 11, 2008

Did They Gotcha Obama?

The corporate media pundit class thinks they 'got' Obama. I think it's just more silliness but it looks like they're going to run with it.

In Guns, God and Government: Obama Courts Bitter and Clingy Pennsylvanians the silly, snarky ABC News' The Note writes,

Did Barack Obama just hand Hillary Clinton and John McCain a nicely gift-wrapped, up for interpretation, potentially damaging quote?

... [Obama:] "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

So far, the Obama campaign is not confirming nor refuting the comments, but Clinton has already weighed in on the stump in Philadelphia.

"I saw in the media it's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience," Clinton said. "As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard everyday for a better future, for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families."

And more,

Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who leads an influential weekly meeting of conservatives, went as far as to argue that Obama's line would cost Democrats the White House.

"That sentence will lose him the election," Norquist told ABC News. "He just announced to rural America: 'I don't like you.'"

"Now you can vote against that guy not because you don't like him," Norquist added. "You can vote against him because he doesn't like you."

I think Obama did a good job of describing some of how small-town people have been tricked into voting for Republicans. And I think a lot of those people are going to see it, too.

Update - It is starting. Republicans Quickly Pounce on Obama Remarks,

Within moments, Republicans had pounced. Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign told Politico's Jonathan Martin that Obama's comment revealed "an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking." Schmidt added: "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

Within hours, the National Republican Congressional Committee had issued a release pushing Rep. Chris Carney -- a vulnerable freshman Democrat from Pennsylvania -- to condemn Obama's remarks.

Here is my take on how they'll use it. They' going to run with "Obama doesn't like you." This gives people cover for bigotry. It's not that they don't like him, they can use this to say he doesn't like them. But Obama does pretty well describe the "Reagan Republican" voters here. And those voters are coming to understand how they have been played. They vote for Republicans, Republican hand the treasury over the Wall Street. They have handed over their pensions, health insurance, jobs, and now their sons and daughters in Iraq so a wealthy few can have ever-bigger jets. And they are figuring that out.

Update - Hillary is also jumping on it, using the Right's talking points. Great. This sort of stuff only helps the Republicans if Obama becomes the nominee. And Obama is right.

Late update - Obama takes it and knocks it out of the park:

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:13 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 14, 2008

The Obama Smears

The Nation has a great article out on the Obama smears that are circulating, and looks at where they come from.

Smearing Obama

The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd be surprised how many people have fallen for it.

[. . .] We may not know who started the smears, but we do know who's amplifying them. The "Obama is a Muslim" rumor began in the fringe conservative blogosphere. "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim," blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on December 18, 2006. Schlussel had a history of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. She said journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents in 2006, "hates America" and "hates Israel"; labeled George Soros a "fake Holocaust survivor"; and speculated that Pakistani terrorists were somehow to blame for last year's shootings at Virginia Tech. Yet her post on Obama gained traction; one month later, the Washington Times's Insight magazine alleged that Obama had attended "a so-called Madrassa" and was a secret Muslim.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 11, 2008

Spitzer

People do idiotic things. Not too long ago Republican Senator David Vitter turned up on a list of prostitution customers. How did the Justice Department respond? Well, it didn't. It helped keep his name secret. And good for them for doing that.

But this time it was a Democratic Governor who has been going after securities fraud cases. And the Republican Justice Department responded very differently. First of all, there are questions about how they found out about this at all -- questions that bring the letters FISA to my mind. Next, they organized a major prosecution of the Governor. Then, they gave his name to the press. Then they included details of wiretapped conversations intended to drive a press frenzy.

There is no question that this is another political prosecution. The Justice Department would not have gone full-steam into this if it were a Republican, and if it were not a Democratic Governor. A federal task force because a guy was seeing a prostitute?

Firedoglake has Some Questions About the Spitzer Incident. Please go read.

I have warned that political prosecutions are going to accelerate as election-time approaches. Watch your backs.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 25, 2008

Because Drudge Says It's True?

All over the progressive blogosphere there is outrage at the Clinton campaign. The Drudge Report had a great big headline "CLINTON STAFFERS CIRCULATE 'DRESSED' OBAMA" and people are outraged.

People, you are being played like a violin.

I posted about this photo yesterday, because several right-wing blogs were carrying it. Not one said anything about it coming from the Clinton campaign. Today the Drudge Report takes the opportunity to inject the photo to the mainstream and gets a twofer bonus, getting all the Obama supporters to blame the Clinton campaign.

Why is it so hard for people to understand that the right wants us divided? Why is it so hard to see that they are working to set us against each other? Come on, people, Hillary Clinton is not your enemy, she is on our side.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 24, 2008

Today's Right-Wingnuts Going Absolutly Apeshit About Obama Post

These people are absolutely nuts. Unfortunately, they also have huge influence over much of the country's media. I might support Obama just because he drives them even crazier than Hillary does.

Nuts: Atlas Shrugs: Obama: Islam's a wink and a nod ;),

...Hussein Obama is Islam's candidate.

... Expect the fantasy mongerers in the mainstream media to continue to scrub and whitewash (no pun) Hussein Obama's Islamic bonafides.

Nuts: WorldNetDaily: Obama worked with terrorist,

The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.

I still think yesterday's beats these, about how Obama is the result of a secret Jewish-Communist conspiracy to generate half-black babies...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 5:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 23, 2008

Right Starting To Unload On Obama

A lot of blog readers weren't really old enough to fully experience the Clinton-hatred of the 90's. So they don't really understand why Hillary Clinton is seen as "divisive."

I think they're going to get a dose of the same sort of stuff again, because the right is starting to do its thing on Barack Obama now.

Example, at National Review, Obama's Political Origins,

Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student.

. . . It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution.

Oh, PLEASE go read the whole thing. There's going to be a lot worse coming.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 4:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 19, 2008

Right Going After Obama, Too

Senator Barack Obama might be the Democratic Party candidate for President. So I thought I would take a quick look at some right-wing sites.

Some people feel that Senator Hillary Clinton has been too badly "damaged" by years of hysterical right-wing attacks. Will Senator Obama be similarly damaged? (This is not a pro-Hillary or anti-Obama post so no hate-mail please.)

Here are some of the headlines at right-wing site WorldNetDaily:

Obama campaign: Mum's the word!
Refuses to respond to drug accusations

WorldNetDaily Exclusive: Sleaze charge: 'I took drugs, had homo sex with Obama'
Minnesota man takes his case to court, YouTube, $100,000 polygraph challenge

WND POLL: Barack, paper, scissors
What do you think of WND being only news agency publishing Obama drug-sex story?

Obama, Clinton trade plagiarism snipes
Barack says he usually gives credit when quoting people, using ideas

Hillary aide accuses Obama of plagiarism
'He's breaking his promises and his rhetoric isn't his own'

Obama responds to plagiarism charge
'I really don't think this is too big of a deal'

Obama faces open season from right if nominated
Barack's relationship with Chicago developer Tony Rezko could prove costly

And a quick look at a few other places:
Human Events: Che Guevara and the Obama Campaign
Associating with communist murderer Che Guevara says a lot about the Obama campaign.

RedState: To the left of Hillary

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 12, 2008

Watching Freedom's Watch: The Donors

Since 2004, we have been very involved in investigating, exposing, and uncovering the roots and exposing the tactics and lies of the right-wing smear machine. James was involved not only in John Kerry's campaign, but also in the Truth and Trust Team, a group of Kerry friends and family who attempted to fight back against the Swift Boat Veterans.

Dave, of course, followed the campaign and those attacks closely, and then worked with James and others, including our friend, Taylor Marsh, on The Patriot Project in 2006. Created by John Kerry, David Thorne and others, The Patriot Project helped veterans such as Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy and John Murtha defend themselves -- even looking into previous attacks on John McCain. We also were part of the team that exposed the Economic Freedom Fund, a group created with a $5,000,000 donation from Bob Perry that attacked moderate Democrats, primarily in red states.

Why do folks like Bob Perry give money like that? It's strictly business.

Take, for example, the global warming arena where we have shown folks how the same tactics, the same strategies, the same people sometimes who created this whole smear empire with the tobacco companies, are now doing the same with global warming.

ExxonMobil has given these groups $25 million over the years - often, incredibly, as charitable donations. This past quarter, they had $11.7 billion in record profits. That's a return on investment we all would envy.

Now, we are looking forward not back.

And what we see is a front group on steroids, a massive death star of right wing machinery, floating, ready and waiting.

Freedom's Watch, operating like the opposite of a grassroots-funded progressive group like MoveOn.org, was founded by major donors like

... Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, who ranks sixth on the Forbes Magazine list of the world's billionaires; Mel Sembler, a shopping center magnate based in St. Petersburg, Fla., who served as the ambassador to Italy and Australia; John M. Templeton Jr., the conservative philanthropist from Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and Anthony H. Gioia, a former ambassador to Malta who heads an investment group based in Buffalo, N.Y. All four men are long-time prolific donors who have raised money on behalf of Republican and conservative causes.

as well as

Richard Fox, one of the major building, development and real estate management companies in eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey and a longtime GOP activist. He co-founded the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Gary Erlbaum, owner of Greentree Properties in Ardmore, Pa., who tried to rally Orthodox Jewish support for last year's failed reelection bid of conservative Christian Sen. Rick Santorum.

Freedom's Watch has direct connections with the Republican Party and is staffed by Republican Party operatives like Ari Fleischer, former White House Spokesperson; Bradley A. Blakeman, a former deputy assistant to George W. Bush; Kevin E. Moley, a senior adviser to Dick Cheney during the 2000 campaign.

Check out their site and their rhetoric. It is a major right wing group and here's the scary part:

Freedom's Watch says it plans to raise over $250,000,000 to play in this election. But Freedom's Watch is a 501(c)(4) organization, which means they can engage in political activity but not as their primary mission. They are allowed to lobby on issues but not support candidates. Yet the group appears to be primarily designed to influence elections in favor of Republican candidates

But who is going enforce the laws? The FEC? The Justice Department? Perhaps Senate Democrats can issue one of their strongly-worded statements of disapproval.

So what do we do?

We watch them -- and we start exposing them now, every day, all day.

We are going to post these articles frequently and often.

We are going to launch a Newsladder where we would appreciate everyone joining and linking up anything they see about this group.

We are going to launch in the coming days a new site, www.watchingfreedomswatch.com where, again, will write and expose this group.

The issue isn't you - and what you know. If you are reading this you are a blog-reader and already know more than most people about how these things work. The issue is whether we can drive narratives and how much knowledge we can give the average American about who these folks really are and what they are up to.

Posted by Dave and James at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 10, 2008

Driving A Wedge

The Drudge Report is a right-wing site that is used to drive right-wing propaganda into the large, corporate media outlets. When a story is featured at the Drudge Report, you always have to ask why, and ask what is the right's intent behind getting this story into circulation.

Today Drudge points us to a story, Wilder Still Sore Over Clinton Comment. This story is obviously an effort to drive a wedge between supporters of Senators Obama and Clinton. It uses out-of-context, incomplete quotes and mischaracterizes the intent and meaning of the quotes to drive up tensions.

The nation's first elected black governor said Saturday he is not ready to excuse comments former President Bill Clinton made about Barack Obama.

In campaigning for his wife last month on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Clinton called Obama's opposition to the Iraq war "a fairy tale." Clinton suggested Obama had toned down his early anti-war fervor during his 2004 Senate campaign.

. . . Clinton also implied that an Obama victory in South Carolina would amount to a reward based on race, like the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 20 years earlier.

Wilder said the former president's comments stung him and other black voters and diminished their respect for Clinton.

"It's not just me (who) feels that; any number of people feel that," Wilder said. "A time comes and a time goes. The president has had his time."

This is propaganda at its best.

Readers know that I do not favor one candidate over the other. I think they are both great candidates who would make excellent Presidents, but neither offers the transformational, progressive change I believe would most benefit the country and world. I defend BOTH of them from attacks -- and wish they would defend each other and us from attacks.

This is an attack. It is an obvious attempt to split the Democratic Party and its supporters, going into the elections. Duh!

Are you going to let them play you like a fiddle? Keep in mind who the enemy is here. The stakes are high: If we let the primary contest divide us how many hundred thousand Iraqis or Iranians will be killed before the 2012 elections, how much more will corporations take over our democracy, how much more concentration of wealth at the top will we see? Please do not be fooled by this stuff! If it appears at DRUDGE, you KNOW something is going on.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 17, 2008

How The Right's Machine Works

Atrios notes,

It would be wrong to discuss Mitt Romney's actual religious beliefs, but perfectly fine to discuss Barack Obama's fictitious ones.

Somehow it reminds me of 2006, when anyone who brought up that Bush went AWOL during Vietnam was unpatriotic, while at the same time it was unpatriotic to mention that Kerry was a war hero...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

January 8, 2008

What People "Know"

We who read and write blogs are what I call "hyper-informed." We not only know about everything that is going on, but we often know about it within minutes or hours.

This can cause us to forget that most people are not up to speed with the kinds of things that you and I take for granted. For example, most people know nothing about the billions of dollars in cash that disappeared in Iraq. You and I know all about it. It was widely reported in the blogs and everyone who frequents blogs read about it. And it is discussed as a given. It forms a foundation of our understanding of what is happening in America - yet it means nothing to most people. There are so many examples like this.

The information gap is so wide that people think something is wrong with you if you try to explain to them what is going on.

Where am I going with this? Yesterday someone told me that most people where she works think that Barack Obama is a Muslim. It's one of those "everyone knows" things.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

December 10, 2007

Was Leak Designed To Hurt Dems?

AmericaBlog asks Did Bush approve CIA leak to embarrass Pelosi?

Sure looks that way. Today's Washington Post reports that Pelosi was briefed about the CIA's waterboarding in 2002 and raised no objections. A few responses:

It's pretty clear that either one of the Republican members of Congress at the meeting, or the CIA, decided to leak what happened at a super-classified post-9/11 briefing in order to embarrass Pelosi and the Democrats. And I don't doubt for a minute that Bush approved the leak, as he always does.

Go read...
It's also clear that had Pelosi raised any private objections during the meeting - remember, it took place in the first year after September 11 - Bush and the Republicans would have leaked that fact to the public (like they just did) and destroyed her career and marked her publicly as a traitor. No member of Congress, no American, could have spoken up about anything in the months after September 11 and survived. It's patently unfair to suggest that somehow because Pelosi didn't object then that she doesn't have the right to object now.

One final point. I hope this teaches Pelosi and Reid and all the Democrats that no matter what you do, this administration will mark you as a traitor and try to do destroy you. You might as well fight back and try to win, because if you don't, you'll sit back and lose.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

November 1, 2007

Latest Clinton Smear

Just so you know what's circulating: Hillary's Lesbian Affair with Muslim Aide

Update - Spreading:
Lots are referencing this and this.
Echoed here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

October 13, 2007

New Republican "NASCAR" Smear On Democrats

Republicans are circulating a new smear, saying that Democratic Congressional staffers advised aides to get vaccinations before visiting NASCAR events. It is, of course, just a lie designed to drive the "elite limousine liberal" and "Democrats hate regular people" narratives.

In fact the aides were visiting "health care centers, detention facilities and other operations where they could be exposed to communicable diseases" and the immunizations are routine.

The Drudge Report has been headlining the smear for a several days. Of course Republican talk-radio has been running with it. Here are just a few examples of the spread of the smear:

FOX: Aides immunized before NASCAR race,

Going to a NASCAR race? Better get your shots.

That's the message Rep. Robin Hayes seems to think is being sent as a handful of congressional aides were told to get immunized before a fact-finding trip for a House Homeland Security Committee.

The group was immunized for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza before attending last weekend's NASCAR race in Talladega and this weekend's race in Concord, N.C.

Atlanta: GOP outraged over NASCAR-immunizations advisory

And days after the lie was refuted, the lie continues to spread:

Atlanta TV: Congressman Insults NASCAR Fans

Indianapolis: NASCAR races danger to government workers?

One way the Republican machine spreads this stuff is posting to forums. And here is an example of a "regular person" posting a comment in a sports forum:

It is offensive that the Democrats choose to be vaccinated from Nascar fans. I thought they claimed to be inclusive of everyone and they blame Republicans for having stereotypes. If they went to a football, baseball, or basketball game would they have been vaccinated? NO. It's when they go to a Nascar event that they are vaccinated. Obviously they consider Nascar fans to be a group of rednecks, southerners and Christians that are apparently disease ridden.

Here is another sports forum example.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

October 11, 2007

Al Gore WILL Be Smeared

If Al Gore Is awarded the Nobel Prize he WILL be smeared. There is no question about it.

On May 15, 2007, we wrote a post titled, We Guarantee Al Gore Will Be Attacked Next Week, We Absolutely Guarantee It. We wrote,

Al Gore has a new book coming out next week, titled, The Assault On Reason.

Because he is standing up, telling the truth and because he simply is a Democrat and progressive leader, Al Gore will be smeared mercilessly by the right-wing smear machine. He will be ridiculed, made fun of and mocked. They will tease and make fun of him.

They will rush to say that he is bitter about 2000, crazy, insane, pontificating and out of touch.

They will bring up his utility bills and the boards he is a member of.

They will talk about his kiss with Tipper, her crusade against vulgar rap lyrics.

They will bring up his weight and the beard. And say it's all about 2008.

And, of course, we were right.

And what happened when Al Gore won an Oscar for his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth? Again, smeared. And that smear continues to spread. There are currently 519,000 web pages referencing it.

Now there is a possibility that Al Gore is going to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his outstanding work warning about and fighting climate change caused by greenhouse gases released into our air.

You would think this was a good thing. But there is a multi-million-dollar "global warming denial industry" operating. It is funded by the big oil and coal companies. Because they have a stranglehold on our economy - and our thinking - these are the most profitable corporations in the history of the world. And they want to keep it that way. So they dish out millions to front-groups to fog over the science that tells us the planet is in danger -- and to smear good people like Al Gore who want us to be more efficient in our energy use, and find alternatives to fuels that pollute.

So if Al Gore is awarded a Nobel Prize, expect the worst -- from the worst.

Posted by Dave and James at 10:31 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

October 3, 2007

Hillary Clinton: Mission Accomplished.

On January 22, 2007, as Senator Clinton went viral with her announcement that she was, essentially, running for The White House, we noted that her first challenge was to shatter the prism of the right. We wrote,

[T]his simply is a fact of modern politics in America. For the past three decades, the right wing has employed a powerful strategy of "$ell and $mear." They insist on being the gatekeepers to public opinion and have developed a powerful machine that tells us who to like - and who to hate.

... They $mear Democratic and Progressive heroes, reducing American success stories such as George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis into humiliated historical footnotes. They destroy our leaders. They destroy those that might become our leaders. There is no Democratic or Progressive leader of any note of the last twenty years that has not been attacked.

Essentially, what we meant was:

Imagine if your worse enemies were the ones describing you and creating the world's impression of you. And imagine they did that for close to fifteen years, how would people who hadn't ever met you feel about you? Exactly.

There are far too many people who have never met Hillary who have a fully-formed impression of her, usually quite negative. Not defendably negative mind you, but more of a "I just don't like her" kind of impression.

The prism of the right.

We wrote:

This is Senator Clinton's primary challenge. Because since this strategy has been deployed, no one, not one single politician has been in the eye of the machine longer than Senator Clinton. For almost fifteen years, Americans have been bombarded with smears and negative commentary about her. Virtually every aspect of her life, personal and political, from her hairstyle to private decisions she made within her marriage, has been criticized.

That's the reality that Senator Clinton, her supporters and her staff have had to deal with every single day and to their great credit, they didn't either ignore it, as John Kerry's campaign did in 2004 on many levels, nor did they whine and complain about it.

What Hillary did was what she did in New York State.

She and her staff rolled up their sleeves and went to work. One voter at a time, one appearance at a time, one county, one district, one state. And what happened in New York State was a pretty good precursor to what is happening nationally. Today, she is at the top of the list of home state own-party favorability ratings. Her 81% favorability rating among Democrats in New York State is right up there at the very top, tied with Ted Kennedy's rating among Democrats in Massachusetts. And Kennedy in Massachusettes is probably the golden standard for being liked by your party in your own state.

Grudgingly, we hear from senior people in other campaigns that they are impressed at how hard she works, how good her team is, how they keep working all day, every day.

They're right. She's top in the polls and in the fundraising race not because of some unforeseeable chain of events, she's there because she understood the reality of her situation and she has outworked everyone else.

If she is our nominee, it will because of two core factors.

She didn't attempt to smash the negative perception as much as she shattered it softly and slowly - one person at a time.

She, and her team, have worked hard, and smart.

Kudos to all of them.

Posted by Dave and James at 7:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

October 2, 2007

Victim Limbaugh

Limbaugh Latest Victim in War of Condemnation - New York Times.

LIMBAUGH is the victim of the Democrats! Wow. There is a brilliance to this.

I bow to them. I am shocked AND awed.

And then there is the difference between Republicans and Democrats on this:

More than 40 Democratic senators signed a letter sent Tuesday to the company that syndicates the radio show, asking that Mr. Limbaugh’s remarks be repudiated.

But no Republican senators signed the letter, highlighting a significant difference between the responses to the MoveOn advertisement and the Limbaugh comments. The Republican-backed plan to condemn the Petraeus advertisement drew substantial Democratic backing in the House and Senate, while Democrats have been unable to splinter Republicans on Mr. Limbaugh.

In fact, Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, has prepared a resolution praising Mr. Limbaugh should Democrats proceed with what he said was an unwarranted attack on a private citizen. “He is a talk show host,” Mr. Kingston said. “He has a right to speak out and say what he thinks.”

There is a time to know when you are just outmatched.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

September 27, 2007

Rush Says Iraq Troops Are "Phony Soldiers"

In recent days the Senate and then the House voted to condemn MoveOn for an ad that questioned General Petraeus' statistics on improvements in Iraq. Many Democrats joined in the condemnation.

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh said that troops serving in Iraq are "phony soldiers." From Media Matters - Limbaugh: Service members who support U.S. withdrawal are "phony soldiers"

Where are the Democrats who voted to condemn MoveOn? Why are they not demanding a vote to condemn Limbaugh for this? The Carpetbagger Report also wants to know.

Update - Considering that the Congress JUST voted to condemn MoveOn, there are a LOT of upset people. New additions, Crooks and Liars, Down With Tyranny, Cliff Schecter, TalkLeft, AmericaBlog, Digby (with a list of similar comments from Rush - all as yet not condemned by the Congress)

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

August 31, 2007

Five Letters: B.L.A.C.K.

While writing today about what conservatives are saying, I came across this little gem -- The mortgage crisis is because we allowed black people to get mortgages. Townhall.com::The Subprime Mortgage Market In Perspective,

Scarcely a soul will recall that political pressure over red-lining was partially responsible for the subprime failures in the first place.

And while on this subject, in my earlier post about conservative philosophy, I chose not to comment on the blatant racism of the conservative Townhall post but I will point it out now. That post wrote about the "shiftless people" of New Orleans and makes a point of calling the mayor, "Mr. "Chocolate City." And the readers "got it."

I don't usually fault bloggers for the comments they elicit, but this post was very clear in its point, and the number of readers leaving racist comments demonstrated that they got that point. Comment examples,

Yes, Katrina was different. It was different because of the huge fat women sitting on the kerb surrounded by their 12 year old daughters with their babies, chanting WE WANTS HEP! instad of getting up off their fat behinds and looking after themselves.

Two weeks after 9/11 the news cameras had packed up and refused to show us any more video or film; months later in New Orleans we were still being treated to shots of wailing Black women and their fatherless babies sitting on their backsides and screaming for cash.

The difference between Katrina and New York City on 9/11 is five letters long. B L A C K.

Other comment examples:

You're very lucky you don't own a business because a Mr. Jackson and a Mr. Sharpton would be on your doorstep shaking you down for reparations payments.

...Presidents from now on will have to tell all the citizens down there, sitting on their fat, welfare fed butts, that we'll never forget and the checks are coming.

In a nation where many people think that they are entitled to reparations for slavery, it is unlikely we will get over Katrina anytime soon.

Time to get these 'welfare queens' off the government dole.

Has no one noticed that the middle class blacks left New Orleans? It was the ones who were poor that got left behind. And one of the main reasons they are poor are because of liberal policies that hurt family values and promote a general sense of irresponsibility - not just among blacks but among liberals in general.

The fat Blacks in New Orleans should take a note.

...they need a Guliani-esque type mayor to reshape i.e. clean out the inept police force and instill a tough clean up the streets type police chief who will dredge up the thugs that rule New Orleans and deposit them in the can.

Yes, they came here to Houston. Our crime rate is over the top. Between the "victims" and the illegals you can just imagine. ... They are still having regular Americans pay their rent. Of course, ACORN is involved as well as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. Go figure.

Before intergration, we dealt with MORE issues than waiting on a governement check

if the pictures from NOLA had shown fat WHITE women sitting on the kerbstone chanting WE WANTS HEP! instead of stirring their stumps on their own behalf, the answer would now be a yawn, just as it was when the Wal-Mart Looter Video showed that even the Black COPS were stealing. And remember how many of these same people said that the reason "Whitey" did not come with sedan chairs to carry them away to a Five Star Life of Ease was RACISM.

The dems have created, coddled and kept down an entire population for the past forty years. The "victims" have become the life blood of your party. The population of NO is a great example of what your party has done. There are people who literally can't do a darn thing for themselves. That's not being compassionate, that's being elitist and superior. Lastly, I find nothing progressive about your party. You have used the same ploys for decades, race baiting and class envy.

It is NOT katrina that wiped-out and ruined NO. It is a large segment of this citizenry that created the nightmare that is NO prior too, during and after. There is no amount of government money that will make these citizens change themselves or their behaviors.

Nagin's "Chocolate City" was a s*** hole before Katrina, and an even worse one now. I lost whatever sympathy I had for the NO "refugees" a few days after the storm, when so many of them wound up here in Houston, and prompty started scamming everyone in sight, from the Feds on down, for money. Never mind how much the crime rate here skyrocketed after they showed up, and even how the local school district was talking about setting up separate schools for the "refugee's" kids, since they could not seem to attend the regular schools without assaulting the locals right and left.

the theme of blacks on Welfare dominates because in New Orleans, blacks dominate. It is, as the Mayor said, a "chocolate city."

Did you forget to mention that blacks represent 13% of the population yet 47% of the welfare recipients are black? ...You're intellect is stellar. So.....what you meant is blacks are approx. 10 times more likely to be on welfare white people, nnless you "forget" to use poulation statistics.

There is a lot more there but it's too sickening to continue...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

August 28, 2007

Revived Asian-Donations Smear On Clinton

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce

The right is reviving the 90s Asian-donations smear on the Clintons.

Headlined at the Drudge Report, the Wall Street Journal has Big Source of Clinton's Cash Is an Unlikely Address,

It isn't obvious how the Paw family is able to afford such political largess. ...

Did you ask them? Is it your business? Actually they did ask them,

But he added: "I have been fortunate in my investments and all of my contributions have been my money."

But they have a Chinese name, so let's do a big story on it.

The Paws' political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.

And now we get to the root of the big scandal - (queue horror-movie music) Someone is CHINESE-American!

William and Alice Paw are of Chinese descent..

That's the whole story. There are no accusations of any wrongdoing. Just that a family with a Chinese name gave a lot of money to the Clintons.

In the 1990s the Republicans ran a smear campaign for years, accusing the Clintons of passing nuclear-weapons secrets to China in exchange for campaign donations. There was never anything to back it up, of course, but the racial hatred aspect got them votes. It plays big in the South, I guess.

In case people don't get it, the right's echo chamber cranks up the noise. No subtle implications need apply: Laundering for Hillary?

The little green house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. in Daly City, Calif., (shown right) may spell big trouble for Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York as she pursues the presidency.

And there they go again. The Republicans are gearing up the smear and race-hatred campaign early this time.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:54 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

August 23, 2007

Another Smear/Lie On Bill Clinton Is Circulating

In 1998 President Clinton launched a major attack on al Queda and tried to kill Osama bin Laden:

The United States launched cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan yesterday against centres allegedly linked with the terrorist bombings of two American embassies.

At the time the right mocked him for it, claiming he was"wagging the dog" and "bombing an asprin factory" - a chemical plant that belonged to Osama bin Laden.

And just how many cruise missiles were launched at bin Laden in Afghanistan?

About 75 cruise missiles landed in Afghanistan at Bin Laden's camps around Khost and Jalalabad. The Khost camp, Zawhar Kili, was the scene of a meeting of "senior leaders of Islamic militant and terrorist groups linked to bin Laden," and was regarded by Pakistani intelligence as a "summit" convened by bin Laden.

75 cruise missiles launched directly at al Queda camps in Afghanistan. 75 cruise missiles!

Today Newsweek has a craftily-worded story that the right is using to smear former President Bill Clinton, saying he lied about trying to get bin Laden. The Newsweek story, The Report the CIA Didn't Want You to See, contains the following passages,

... The report also seemed to raise new questions about former President Clinton’s angry claim to Fox News anchor Chris Wallace last year that he had authorized the CIA to “kill” Osama bin Laden—a directive that the report suggested was more ambiguous and limited than Clinton asserted.

[. . .] Clinton appeared to have been referring to a December 1999 Memorandum of Notification (MON) he signed that authorized the CIA to use lethal force to capture, not kill, bin Laden. But the inspector general’s report made it clear that the agency never viewed the order as a license to “kill” bin Laden—one reason it never mounted more effective operations against him. “The restrictions in the authorities given the CIA with respect to bin Laden, while arguably, although ambiguously, relaxed for a period of time in late 1998 and early 1999, limited the range of permissible operations,” the report stated.

So let's look at what the right is spreading today.

Don Surber: Clinton lied, people died,

Michael Isikoff, the reporter who broke the Monica Lewinsky story only to have his editors at Newsweek spike the story, has caught Bill Clinton in another lie: He never authorized the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Surber clearly doesn't understand what a cruise missile is - or what 75 of them can do.

Captain's Quarters, Did Clinton Lie About Targeting Bin Laden?,

It appears that Bill Clinton may have exaggerated his record when it came to strategizing against Osama bin Laden. Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball take a look at the Inspector General's report of the pre-9/11 intelligence failures at the CIA and find an interesting nugget. Despite Clinton's angry assertion to Chris Wallace in last year's controversial Fox interview, he never gave the CIA an assassination order regarding bin Laden.

Morrissey apparently also doesn't understand what a cruise missile is capable of.

Macsmind, To Slick Willie it depends on what you mean by “Kill”,

Capt Ed notes that Newsweek (ugh) has apparently caught Slick in another (I’ve lost count) lie.

[. . .] the fact remains that Clinton didn’t do squat because they didn’t see Bin Laden as important as keeping his ass from being removed from office - it’s that simple.

Liberty Pundit, Did Clinton Lie? Is The Pope Catholic?,

How do you know if Bill Clinton is lying? His lips are moving...

[. . .] So Bill Clinton, adamantly saying that he “tried to kill him” was a complete lie. And I’m not surprised one bit that it was.

... He did nothing.

We were attacked at least three times on his watch, and he did nothing (first WTC attack, the African embassies, and the USS Cole…I might be leaving one out).

More examples:

Hang Right Politics, CIA Report Unmasks Another Clinton Lie

Billy Boy Caught In A Lie, Again…

Wake Up America,

There is plenty of blame to go around for 9/11 and Clinton is going to have to start accepting his fair share of it.

Clinton Caught In Yet Another Lie

The Strate-Sphere,

The conservative bloggers have had Clinton on tape himself commenting on how he talked himself into impotence on Bin Laden. Clinton was not a lame duck in his second term - he was a hamstrung duck. He could not dare to make any bold moves because of his personal/professional issues. So while he was being serviced by an intern in the Oval Office he let Bin Laden run free to finish his work on 9-11. They ultimate screwing of the American people - and he did not even offer us a drink.

Q and O, Clinton caught in another fabrication,

That he lied about his order concerning bin Laden should come as no surprise.

Gateway Pundit, Newsweek Reporters Catch Slick Willy in Another Lie?

Ace of Spades,

Didn't we already know Clinton had refused to actually give a kill order on bin Ladin? We know this, it's proven by documentation, but the media won't report it. I'd say it's possible the media will be shamed into finally reporting it by this new report, but that's simply absurd.

And it goes on and on. That's a whole lot of so-called "conservatives" who don't even know what a cruise missile is.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

August 13, 2007

Rove Resigning - Updated

Karl "Party over Country" Rove is resigning "to spend more time with his family."

Karl Rove did more to divide America than anyone since Newt Gingrich. (See Language: A Key Mechanism of Control)

Just one example, after 9/11 Rove engineered the creation of the Homeland Security Department, which was entirely a "wedge" device for use in the 2002 elections. The core of the concept was to get rid of government employee unions. The idea was to force the Democrats to either vote against unions or pound them as "unpatriotic." And then, to pound them as unpatriotic anyway.

Updates:

Simon Rosenberg, How Rove will be remembered,

Karl Rove was the "architect" of one of the worst governments in American history, and the one who engineered the end of modern conservatism, one of the most successful ideological movements of recent times.

Brilliant yes. Bold, without a doubt. A compete and utter failure who left his country and his movement weaker than the found it? Yep.

Eventually, perhaps, disgraced.

Shakesville,

How typical of him to slink off out of the bunker and leave the mess for someone else to clean up.

FDL,

All Karl ever wanted was to be left alone to work in secret to destroy America’s political landscape, and not be held accountable.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 6:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 30, 2007

Bill O'Reilly, hatemonger

David Neiwert writes about Bill O'Reilly of FOX News in Orcinus: Bill O'Reilly, hatemonger. He has a number of quotes from O'Reilly himself, including "Well, I want to kill Michael Moore" and "Mexican wetbacks" and talking about a "final solution" for dealing with Arabs.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 26, 2007

Become A Fox Attacker

Become a Fox Attacker. Help identify FOX News advertisers (national and local) for the database. Then let advertisers know what is being said on FOX News. This is not a boycott, it is letting advertisers know what is being done with their advertising dollars.

Fight back! Become a Fox Attacker.

Fox is not a legitimate news channel. They consistently misrepresent facts, manufacture terror, and slander progressives.

We're fighting back by identifying and calling all of FOX's advertisers. All of them. Particularly local advertisers who probably have no idea the kind of hatred their money is supporting.
We’re fighting back by identifying and calling all of FOX’s advertisers. All of them. Particularly local advertisers who probably have no idea the kind of hatred their money is supporting.

This is not a boycott. We are simply calling advertisers and informing them about FOX. And making Bill O’Reilly’s life a living hell.

Thanks to Brave New Films.

More at Crooks and Liars, and Rick Perlstein at Common Sense Blog,

I've just become a proud "FOX Attacker". Now you can too. It's not a boycott. It's simply calling advertisers and informing them what FOX says. FOX can't survive that. Have a blog? Then help spread the word.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 23, 2007

Everything You Need To Know About Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney holds up a sign saying "Obama Osama"

Romney on 9/11: "Lighten Up" | Buckeye State Blog

Posted by Dave Johnson at 2:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 21, 2007

JetBlue Caves To Right-Wing Intimidation, Calls DailyKos "Hateful"

Jerome Armstrong has the story: MyDD :: Jet Blue on drugs. The President of JetBlue caves to a right-wing intimidation campaign led by Fox News, and writes a letter echoing Fox news' characterization of DailyKos as a "hate site."

Go read.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

July 7, 2007

The Fall Lie-Attack Started Today

Yesterday I said the lie-attack would begin this fall, but it only took a day. Yesterday I wrote,

This fall President Bush will veto a number of spending bills, saying that they spend too much money. This will be accompanied by a huge, orchestrated media campaign blasting out the message: "We told you so. Now that Democrats are in charge they have gone wild with spending."

... There will also be an orchestrated campaign to convince the public that Democrats are making their taxes go up - because of the spending.

Today, Bush's radio address, Bush sharpens budget attack on Democrats,

Escalating a budget battle with Democrats who control Congress, President George W. Bush accused them on Saturday of pushing tax-and-spend policies and renewed his veto threat.

"They are working to bring back the failed tax-and-spend policies of the past," he said in his weekly radio address. "Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely."

... Bush accused Democrats of proposing in the next five years the "biggest tax increase in history" though he gave no details how he reached that conclusion. "I have made clear that I will veto any attempt to take America down this road," he said.

Let's hope my other prediction - political prosecutors indicting Democrats - does not come true.

I left out one thing from my prediction: Republicans will block every piece of legislation and then say that the Democrats aren't passing any legislation.

Update - News media plays along, check this headline: Bush rips Democratic lawmakers' failures,

President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Saturday of being unable to live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to fund the federal government.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:21 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

June 26, 2007

Elizabeth Edwards Confronts Ann Coulter

Think Progress ｻ Elizabeth Edwards Confronts Coulter During Live Television Appearance

Watch it:

>

Why was this woman FEATURED on a national show, when we all know that her entire routine is hate speech? Shame on Chris Matthews. Shame on MSNBC.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

Employee Free Choice Fear and Smear

Bob Geiger has a post up: BobGeiger.com: GOP Gives Employee Free Choice Act Fear-And-Smear Treatment.

The Employee Free Choice Act helps restore some ability for employees to unionize. Under Reagan and then under Bush it has become nearly impossiblefor employees to form a union, and those trying to do so get fired. This is against the law, of course, but who enforces the law when it brushes up against what the big corporations want? And the big corporations do NOT want unions.

So the Republicans are out there with the fear and smear tactics. Read Bob's post for examples.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

June 20, 2007

Right Circulating A LIE About Hillary and Take Back America

Here is a lie we should try to nip in the bud.

Hillary Clinton spoke at the Take Back America conference this morning. The Corner on National Review Online is circulating the following lie about the event:

When she declared, "The American military has done its job," boos began to be heard around the room. As the boos increased, Sen. Clinton raised her voice. "The American military has succeeded," she said, to more boos. "It is the Iraqi government that has failed to make the tough decisions." Still more boos. [emphasis added]

I was there. I heard what happened. NO ONE in the crowd booed her for saying "The American military has succeeded." That is simply a lie by a professional propagandist.

Bill Scher has more, with video to prove it.

Taylor Marsh has more at Huffington Post.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

June 12, 2007

Incompetent Hit-Job On Gore

The Washington Post hires far-right Weekly Standard editor Andrew Ferguson to "review" Al Gore's book The Assault On Reason. And what does the guy do? In the first line of the review he writes, "You can't really blame Al Gore for not using footnotes in his new book..." to imply that Gore made up an Abraham Lincoln quote. Ferguson (and the editors) misses that Gore's book has endnotes! No one even checks whether it is a real Lincoln quote! And all this gets into print in the Washington Post!

And there's more. Tom Schaller writes about it in TAPPED. Go read.

Update - Eric Boehlert at Media Matters, The media's assault on reason,

But such is life for Al Gore when dealing with the Beltway press, where his vociferous critics cannot be bothered with the simplest fact-checking task, while oblivious media outlets such as the Post print up the errors.

Of course the thick irony here is that Gore's book laments the state of our crumbling national dialogue, yet it's the press that often deliberately dumbs down and interrupts our "conversation of democracy." Gore doesn't often explicitly connect the dots in his book, but the press remains a culprit throughout.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 28, 2007

Right Fires Up The Smear Machine Against Obama

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce

As we write this (Friday), a fresh, still-steaming smear has been dumped on Barack Obama over at The Drudge Report.

A giant headline - almost as big as our computers' monitors - screams, "MCCAIN AIDE: 'OBAMA WOULDN'T KNOW DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN RPG AND A BONG'," linking (as Drudge so often does) to a post at Politico. (Obama's spokesman replied, "America doesn't need juvenile name-calling from Washington, we need a commitment to end this war and bring our brave troops home." Also see the video clip at the end of this post.)

So they're going to try out the old "conservatives are strong on national security" nonsense narrative, even after pushing George Bush on the American public? You would think that with almost all of the conservative leadership having dodged military service and earning the label "chickenhawk" they might not want to push this one. But that narrative runs on progressives and not on conservatives, so it might work - and that's what counts if you care more about power than America. And you run with what you have...

In our December post, How Long Will The Right Let Us Love Obama?, we looked at Obama's high poll numbers and asked where are the rest of our leaders? As deserving as Obama may be, what has happened to the perception of so many progressive leaders, that a newcomer first-term Senator is at the top?

We wrote, This favorability poll proves the power of the Right Wing's ongoing and successful strategy of "SELL and SMEAR."

We continued,

Our point here is not whether you will vote for them, or volunteer for their campaign, or give them money, but do you, the American voting public, have a favorable impression of these leaders?

The sad and resounding answer is no. This is what the machine does to Democratic and Progressive leaders. It smears, and attacks and destroys them. It leaves millions of Americans with an uneasy feeling about John Kerry or Hillary Clinton, a bad taste in the mouth, "I don't know. I just don't like him." It's emotional. It's not rational. But it is very, very real.

And it's not just these our most recent leaders. As we wrote last week, President Jimmy Carter left office virtually in disgrace. What about Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis? Are they perceived as what they really are - respected leaders who are both true American success stories? Hardly. They are perceived in the "conventional wisdom" as jokes and afterthoughts.

Those powerful negative stereotypes were carefully created by the use of brilliant marketing, coordinated messaging, virtually unlimited budgets and a complete lack of morals.

Barack Obama is one more progressive leader climbing up in the public's esteem. So here we are. Another day, another smear.

This time Obama had a great answer:

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 18, 2007

And Away We Go: As Al Gore's Book Gathers Steam, So Does The Smearing.

On Thursday, Time magazine put up on its website an advance article of its cover story on Al Gore's new book, with excerpts.

Immediately the right started the character assassination. Just like we predicted, there's not a word about the merits of Gore's arguments. Not a word. Why do you think that is?

MacsMind, Al Gore's assault on our intelligence:

But perhaps the greatest fraud is that Al Gore is being presented as some sort of intellectual when in fact even his ex-boss knew him to be an uninformed and downright ignorant boob.

Ankle Biting Pundits, "Prime Time" Al Gore - The Real "Assault On Reason":

"... a man who sold the most serious vote of his Senate career for 20 minutes of Prime Time TV..."

Gateway Pundit, Al Gore Assaults Reason:

In 1992 Al Gore slammed George Bush for ignoring Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism and Saddam's building of nuclear weapons.

1992? 15 years ago? Is that the best you can do? And something happened between then and George W. Bush's claims that Iraq had WMD: The Clinton/Gore administration's massive 1998 bombing campaign destroyed Iraq's capacity to develop WMD! Anway...

Riehl World View, The Pot Meets Kettle Lifetime Achievement Ward:

He should follow-up with The Audacity of Hypocrisy and toss his hat into the ring for President. The Nutroots have to love this guy.

EconoPundit, From the man who brought you the drowning polar bear...:

Honestly, this has the same level of economic sophistication as pre-WWII arguments about Jewish bankers causing WWI.

California Conservative, Freudian Slip?:

Of all the people asking why "reason, logic and truth...play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions," Al Gore shouldn't be the one asking. After all, his mindless rants are almost totally devoid of logic. Lord knows that they're essentially fiction, thereby stripping truth from the equation.

Jules Crittenden, Gorespeak:

He was for public dscourse before he was against it. In the same aptly named blatherfest, "The Assault on Reason." What's Al Gore got against "the rejection and distortion of science," anyway? He got an Oscar doing that.

Over at Smoking Politics, we've gotten some really nice comments some of which are actually directed as us for having the audacity to stand up for Vice President Gore.

A few of our favorites:

There is the simple:

"Al Gore is full of shit."

The odd leaps of logic:

"Wow - ridiculed, made fun of and mocked. They will tease and make fun of him.

Those fascist right-wing demogagues. Teasing Al Gore. Next stop - the gas chambers:

Grow up you left wing lunatics"

The poignant:

"You useless idiots."

And our personal favorite, hat tip and thank you to Sam:

"With a few exceptions, this is the most outrageously hilarious set of comments I've yet to see on the WWW, exactly fulfilling Dave Johnson's and James Boyce's prediction.

This site must be high on the list of the lunatic fringe of the right wing

Keep up the good work!"

Join us at Noon EST on Friday when Dave sits in as Guest-Co-Host, with James on "Heading Left's BlogTalkRadio Show" and we discuss these comments, and much more.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 17, 2007

Al Gore Stands Up: Time Cover Story On The Assault On Reason Is Out

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce of Smoking Politics

This morning, thanks to our friends at "Time" we have just seen a glimpse into what we believe is one of the most important political books of the year, Al Gore's, "The Assault On Reason."

This cover story article is fair, balanced and great insight into both Al Gore and the new book.

Of course, this will also start the attacks - but what you see is a man who knows what's right, what to do and how to fight - not to mention what he is fighting far.

It will be interesting to watch the attacks, because they have to make him an object of ridicule.

Why? Well, here's a quote from a tobacco executive:

"Our offensive strategy is to shoot the messenger."

And here's the perfect example from this morning.

John Edwards wants to end the war in Iraq. Mike Huckabee wants to make fun of his haircut. That's pathetic.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 15, 2007

We Guarantee Al Gore Will Be Attacked Next Week. We Absolutely Guarantee It.

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce of Smoking Politics

All too often, Democrats are swiftboated, ozoned, attacked and smeared and after the attacks happen, sometimes they respond - sometimes they don't.

We have had enough.

Here's what we know and here's what we're going to do about it.

On Monday, Al Gore has a new book coming out next week, titled, "The Assault On Reason".

Because he is standing up, telling the truth and because he simply is a Democrat and Progressive leader, Al Gore will be smeared mercilessly by the right-wing smear machine. He will be ridiculed, made fun of and mocked. They will tease and make fun of him.

They will rush to say that he is bitter about 2000, crazy, insane, pontificating and out of touch.

They will bring up his utility bills and the boards he is a member of. They will talk about his kiss with Tipper, her crusade against vulgar rap lyrics.

They will bring up his weight and the beard. And say it's all about 2008.

But what they will not do:

TALK ABOUT WHAT'S IN THE BOOK.

Why are we so sure?

Because this is the core of the Right Wing tobacco-driven strategy. You distract. You create doubt. You sell fear and mock those that are not cool.

You have to do this if you are them because you simply can't talk about the facts. Smoking kills - how are you going to sell that little fact? By ignoring the facts and selling smoking as 'Marlboro Country' clean healthy outdoor living. Right Wing programs and policies are not good for the average American. So how do you sell them? Same way. Ignore the facts. Instead, try to kill the messenger.

In this book, Al Gore is going to go straight up against the Right Wing smear and noise machine - the one that we have been writing about at Smoking Politics. And we know what that means.

Over at Amazon you'll find this description of Gore's upcoming book:

A visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degradation of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason

... We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Related to this and of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest in the process by which the truth is ascertained, the tenets of fact-based reasoning-first among them an embrace of open inquiry in which unexpected and even inconvenient facts can lead to unexpected conclusions.

How did we get here? How much damage has been done to the functioning of our democracy and its role as steward of our security? Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason shows us, we have precious little time to waste.

You stand up and say this, that's courage. Just like Al Gore was right about the Iraq War back in 2002 when Democratic Senators were falling all over themselves to vote FOR THE WAR, and Al Gore was against it.

So at Smoking Politics we are going to try to be ready in advance this time. Imagine that - not on the defensive, not surprised at the smear that shows up, not scrambling around trying to figure out what to do about it.

We're going to respond the minute the first attack shows up. We're going to be researching the apparatus that transmits the smear. We're going to explain the mechanism of the smear. We're going to expose those behind the smear. And we're going to launch a pushback against the smear, into the press.

At Smoking Politics we think that going into the 2008 election cycle - whoever the candidate is - nothing matters as much as this issue - the first thing we have to defeat is this Fear and $mear strategy that has been so effective at destroying our leaders and building up their own.

For the Democratic Party, the Progressive causes it supports and for the country, taking dead aim against the Right on this issue is critical to future success. A most important but often overlooked first step is just to be able to spread the news of the existence of this system and highlight how it impacts public debate. Some of the suggested tactics may seem basic and simplistic, but they are the building blocks we need to execute in order to stand up and defend ourselves, our candidates and our values.

While many feel that the Right's power and influence is diminished by the 2006 election, and that the Republican Party is waning, nothing is further from the truth and the stakes in the next election are extremely high.

Will the party and the leadership that ozoned Al Gore, race-baited John McCain, destroyed Max Cleland and swift-boated John Kerry lay down their arms and play nice? Absolutely not. Why would they?

The famous Chinese warrior Sun Tzu says:

Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

Al Gore is ready to fight and he understands the battle and what's at stake.

We are at peace as you can only be when you know what you're fighting for.

Are you ready to stand up and fight with us?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:09 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 9, 2007

Smoking Politics

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce

There was a time when this country worked to solve its problems.

There was a time in this country when political campaigns were about issues and solutions and ideas.

There was a time when our legislators honestly debated, and minds could be changed, and bipartisan laws could be passed.

There was a time when America was seen as an honest broker for peace, even in the Middle East. And there was even a time when there were solar panels on roof of the White House.

Ronald Reagan - the "Marlboro Man" - took office as President in 1981 - 26 years ago! That means that people under 40 today don't even remember a time when America "worked" and took care of its people and paid its bills. They don't remember a time when the people rather than the corporations and the rich made the decisions. And it especially means that they don't remember a time when campaigns were about anything other than cheap psychological tricks and smears.

Since then liberals and progressives and Democrats of all kinds and colors have been looking back in shock and awe and wondering what happened to them, and what has been happening to the country. Why have we been getting meaner and uglier and greedier and more violent?

Smoking Politics is about what has been happening to us and our country. Smoking Politics is about looking into and exposing the techniques and the tricks and the scams and the sophisticated psychological persuasion methods that are used on us. Smoking Politics is an organization and website and radio show and campaign to get ahead of this attack politics and restore America's ability to make decisions and solve problems and take care of its people again.

Why the name "Smoking Politics?" In our post announcing Smoking Politics, we wrote,

Why do we call this project "Smoking Politics?" Because the origins of the conservative strategy of Fear and $mear come out of the golden age of the tobacco companies. The tobacco companies learned that with the right combination of psychological persuasion tactics and media budget that literally anything could be marketed to the American public.

They were so good that they could persuade people to kill themselves - and to hand over their money while they did it. The right saw the success of this strategy - and noted the total lack of facts and morals involved and decided - if people will pay to smoke, maybe they could be convinced to support a right-wing agenda which was equally deadly. Maybe they could actually convince blue-collar workers to accept the right-wing agenda that asked them to give up their health care and pensions so CEOs could buy bigger jets? So they took these tactics into the political realm.

In that post we wrote about the tactics of Fear and $mear,

...the tobacco strategy of Fear and $mear, combined with the psychological persuasion tactic of "Marlboro Man" appeals to self-image and its counter-image of ridiculing and humiliating the "wimp" became America's politics.

What is Ronald Reagan's image, hat askew on his horse, if not that of the Marlboro Man?

And how did they cast Jimmy Carter to prepare the country for Reagan's campaign, if not the ineffective wimp and an object of ridicule - despite the fact that Jimmy Carter was a Navy man? Sound familiar? Fear and $mear.

So we are moving rapidly into the 2008 election season, and we're seeing the tactics of Fear and $mear coming out to poison our politics once again.

The most recent example? At the request of the Port of San Francisco, Speaker Nancy Pelosi added a $25 million in waterfront improvements for her city, San Francisco, to a water redevelopment bill passed by the House in April. The Republican Party issued a press release accusing her of corruption, falsely stating that Pelosi had inserted the "earmark" to benefit her husband, who owns property "very close" to the waterfront. AP, without checking any of the facts, wrote a story echoing the Republican Party statement, which was immediately pushed by the Drudge Report.

The right-wing amplifier kicked into action. A few examples:

Investor's Business Daily: A New Pelosi Pigout?

Judicial Watch: Pelosi Earmark Helps Enrich Husband

Greg Sargent of TPM'S Horse's Mouth actually bothered to check the facts, and found that there was nothing to the story, that the Port had requested the improvements, and that Pelosi's husband's property was actually three miles away from the proposed improvement.

Media Matters also has details, in their post AP ran false headline on story reporting baseless GOP allegations against Pelosi

So here we are again, with the so-called "conservatives" using another lie and smear to try to sway people. How long will this continue? Until the public is made aware that they actually do just lie.

And that's what smoking Politics will be working to do - expose the lies, expose the tactic of Fear and $mear. Stop by and say hi. Or listen in today at Noon Eastern as we have our weekly BlogTalkRadio Show, "Smoking Politics Radio Show."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

May 3, 2007

SP Alert: Dick Cheney Rips Condoleeza Rice For Talking With Syrians.

Dave Johnson and James Boyce

Secretary of State Condolezza Rice met with the Syrian Foreign Minister today, incurring the wrath of the administration and conservative pundits. Leading the criticism was Vice President Dick Cheney.

In an interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney said Assad has "been isolated and cut off because of his bad behavior, and the unfortunate thing about the "Secretary of State's meeting" is it sort of breaks down that barrier."

Conservative pundits and the White House itself further piled on the Secretary of State. The criticism was direct, clear and very personal.

White House spokesperson Dana Perino strongly criticized "Rice's planned meeting" saying, "We think it is a really bad idea. People should take a stop back and think about the message it sends and the message it sends to our allies," Perino said.

The Heritage Foundation is particularly upset at the incident.

"Rice's meeting is likely to undermine the Bush administration's foreign policy and help the Syrians go back to business as usual - much to the dismay of our Lebanese, Iraqi, and Israeli friends, all of whom want the United States to take a tougher stand against Syria," Jim Phillips, a research fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, told Cybercast News Service .

Yes, we did change all the names in the quotes from Nancy Pelosi to Condolezza Rice to make a simple point.

It is right to talk with the Syrians.

It's hypocritical, repugnant and wrong to point the right wing noise machine at Speaker Pelosi for doing exactly what you're doing.

Bloggers refer to this double standard as "IOKIYAR"

Please join us as we talk about subjects like this this at Smoking Politics and on our "Smoking Politics Radio Show."

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 24, 2007

SP Alert: Four Hundred Bucks For A Haircut? WTF?

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce

A quick visit to John Edwards's Presidential Campaign web site clearly shows what his passions are and what he wants to talk about. Not necessarily in order of his priority, but John Edwards wants to:

End the war in Iraq.

Guarantee affordable health care to every American.

Fight global warming.

Eliminate poverty in America.

Revitalize rural America.

Restore America's moral authority in the world.

Help solve the humanitarian crisis in Africa.

It's almost too many critical issues and is more than enough to talk about right?

Well, this past week, we have seen clearly, that the Right Wing doesn't want to talk about these issues. Let's break them down briefly:

End the war in Iraq? No, the Right wants to continue the escalation in Iraq and potentially expand the conflict to Iran.

Fight global warming? No, the Right as best shown by Exxon-funded Media Research Center and their attacks on Laurie David and Sheryl Crow's global warming concert tour insist on putting profit before morality. They know the science as well as anyone but the scientific facts conflict with the profits of their top donors, ergo, their denial program continues.

Guarantee affordable health care to every American? Absolutely not. The cost to corporate donors makes it a necessity to stop this in its tracks. Tens of millions spent fighting and lobbying against health care reform is money well spent by those wishing to block this from becomming a right of every American.

Eliminate poverty in America? No, the programs that would facilitate this, such as the raising of the minimum wage, conflict with the goals of the Right's corporate base.

Revitalize rural America? Again, the programs that would facilitate this would cost large corporations money, no.

Restore America's moral authority in the world? The Right sees this differently. They don't mind torture, choosing war over peace and the death of civilians. It's a fundamental difference of morality.

Help solve the humanitarian crisis in Africa? The Right asks: why bother?

So clearly, there is a conflict because the vast majority would BENEFIT from John Edward's plans and actions (for starters, the 40,000,000 Americans without health care, their lives would greatly benefit.)

So how do they distract people from talking about these issues? The tobacco industry solved this problem nicely by portraying people who didn't smoke as not cool. They couldn't talk about their product honestly, so instead mock and make fun of the people who don't use the product.

So how would you make fun of the son of a mill worker who rose up from poverty himself in rural South Carolina to run for President? How would you distract people from his message and his ideas?

Well, he has too big a house. This is the problem with Liberals, they're not "like us," they think they are better, riding in limo's, drinking their chardonnay and lattes.

Recently, there was a concerted effort to circulate stories that John Edwards is so rich that he has just built a mansion that is the biggest house in the county where he lives in North Carolina. Can you imagine?

What a scum ball! He made enough money to build a big house and he built it. That story struck home with the people the Right wanted to reach. Did their tactic work? Absolutely. According to a Google search there are now over 796,000 web pages that reference the words 'John' 'Edwards' and 'mansion' and 13,800,000 that contain the words 'John' 'Edwards' 'big' and 'house'.

Distract. Distract. Distract.

On April 15th, Presidential Candidates of both parties released their fundraising and expenditure documents and there is a wealth of information iavailable about the candidates, who is giving money and how they are spending their money.

Operatives from both parties trolled through the documents and what did they come up with from the Edwards documents?

A $400 haircut.

Perfect fodder for the machine because blue collar men are not going to like some pretty boy who goes to a spa and spends more on one hair cut than they do in a year. (And if the Right can make Edwards a "pretty boy," maybe those same men will be distracted from realizing that if Edwards was elected, their jobs would come with better pay and benefits, and their kids would have cleaner water to fish in and a better future. Let's talk hair cuts boys.)

The story moves up the food chain on the Right,. And, like the Gore energy bill story, it gets the stamp of validation from Fox News. Millions of Americans are exposed to something that simply doesn't matter.

The story is heavily promoted by Fox News. The online Fox News story begins, "Looking pretty is costing John Edwards' presidential campaign a lot of pennies." The story adds that Edwards visits a salon that caters mostly to women. Double-whammy. Limousine Liberal AND a pretty-boy!

The story has spread rapidly. If you do a Google search for pages that contain the words 'edwards', '$400' and 'haircut' there are already 187,000 web pages that contain those terms! (Testing this by looking at page 43 and then page 100 of the search results, every page cited was still directly about the purported John Edwards $400 haircut.) Similarly, a search for 'John' 'Edwards' 'Breck' and 'girl' yields 134,000 results.

What a 'faggot' as Ann Coulter would - did - say.

What a disgrace we say, that they try to distract us from talking about such important issues.

If you can, join us on our BlogTalkRadio show at noon eastern on Wednesday. We will be discussing this and how we can fight back. We will be taking calls and would love to hear from you.

One final point:

If you are a Barack supporter or a fan of Senator Clinton, or any other Democratic candidate, don't smile at the furor around Senator Edwards and this issue.

Because be it Barack's supposed radical Muslim childhood or Senator Clinton's personal life, they're coming for you next. The way to fight this is to back each other up -- because that backs ALL OF US up.

Please join us as we talk about subjects like this this at Smoking Politics and on our "Smoking Politics Radio Show" on BlogTalkRadio at Noon eastern on Wednesday. We will be taking calls!

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 14, 2007

WHY They Say Such Outrageous Things

Jamison Foser writes in this week's "Media Matters",

In the midst of a torrent of comments about "femi-Nazis" and "bitches" and "hos," these more subtle problems are rarely even noticed, and even more rarely discussed among the media elite and those who appear on their shows.

And that may be the most damaging effect of the kind of commentary that we routinely hear from the likes of Imus and Limbaugh and Coulter: Rhetoric that should be unacceptable becomes merely outrageous; that which should be outrageous becomes merely controversial; and that which should be controversial is barely noticed, if at all.

I gave a talk a few weeks ago to an organization that supports public education. My talk as titled We're All In This Together. I began the talk by playing a video clip of Neil Boortz on Fox, saying that teachers unions are more dangerous to America than terrorists armed with nuclear weapons because a nuke could only wipe out 100,000 people but public schools are "destroying a generation."

I talked about the terrible things right-wingers routinely say. Then I explained the Right's Overton Window strategy of walking people's thinking up a ladder that turns unthinkable ideas into acceptable and even reasonable-sounding.

After explaining the Overton Window I said,

NOW we can understand the role of people like the guy from the video clip. He is out at the extreme – on the right side of the see-saw. Anything LESS extreme sounds almost moderate by comparison – in the window of “thinkable.” THIS is why they say those outrageous things. They’re walking people up the ladder. It’s part of the long-term strategy.

If you're interested, I have the whole thing posted over at the Commonweal Institute blog, along with links to reference materials.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 11, 2007

Introducing Smoking Politics. And Our Mission To End The Right Wing Strategy Of Fear and $mear.

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce

Today, we are launching a new web site, and a new radio show, and continuing a passion and partnership that has been developing over the past year. The site is Smoking Politics and on it we will track, expose and fight back - hard - every single day against the right's strategy of Fear and $mear. We will also host a weekly BlogTalkRadio show, The Smoking Politics Radio Hour, with our first show today at noon Eastern, 9:00 am Pacific. We will be taking calls.

Why do we call this project "Smoking Politics?" Because the origins of the conservative strategy of Fear and $mear come out of the golden age of the tobacco companies. The tobacco companies learned that with the right combination of psychological persuasion tactics and media budget that literally anything could be marketed to the American public.

They were so good that they could persuade people to kill themselves - and to hand over their money while they did it. The right saw the success of this strategy - and noted the total lack of facts and morals involved and decided - if people will pay to smoke, maybe they could be convinced to support a right-wing agenda which was equally deadly. Maybe they could actually convince blue-collar workers to accept the right-wing agenda that asked them to give up their health care and pensions so CEOs could buy bigger jets? So they took these tactics into the political realm.

Look at how much of the right's political agenda is aligned with the needs of the tobacco companies. There's deregulation, especially in the area of protecting the health and safety of the public, or of regulating toxic substances. There's "tort reform" - the attempt to prevent victims of corporate malfeasance from using the courts to hold companies responsible for their actions. And, of course, there's tax cuts for corporations - and the government looking the other way as the tobacco industry continues to spend $35,000,000 a month marketing their product.

There's another critical link between the far-right and the tobacco industry. Few people know that Karl Rove was a tobacco company advisor. Even fewer know that the heads of the "political consulting firms" like DCI that set up Republican-connected 527 front groups like the Swift Boat Vets came from tobacco companies as well. Tobacco funds supported the right. Tobacco consultants sold the agenda.

The recent Union of Concerned Scientists report on the efforts to discredit global warming science describe an in-place infrastructure of organizations that had aided the tobacco companies in their strategy of discrediting the science that said cigarettes were killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. The report describes how Exxon basically took over this infrastructure of science-denial organizations and used it to muddy the waters about the science that shows global warming is occurring.

And look at the ridicule that Al Gore is enduring from the right. Why? Because he is trying to save the planet - he is the object of humiliation. We even saw it just this week when a "charity" who recently gave Rush Limbaugh an award for "media excellence" and accepts $50,000 a year from ExxonMobil attacked Laurie David and Sheryl Crow's Stop Global Warming tour.

So the tobacco strategy of Fear and $mear, combined with the psychological persuasion tactic of "Marlboro Man" appeals to self-image and its counter-image of ridiculing and humiliating the "wimp" became America's politics.

What is Ronald Reagan's image, hat askew on his horse, if not that of the Marlboro Man?

And how did they cast Jimmy Carter to prepare the country for Reagan's campaign, if not the ineffective wimp and an object of ridicule - despite the fact that Jimmy Carter was a Navy man? Sound familiar? Fear and $mear. And how have they cast their politicians and policies since? As variations on the macho Marlboro Man. Do we need to say how our Democratic leaders have been portrayed since? $meared as effete, ineffectual clowns.

And then there's the Fear Factor - we spend more on military than the rest of world's countries combined, but we need to live in fear. Fear of a man in cave. Fear of a country that doesn't even have nuclear weapons. Fear of fighting them here if we don't fight them over there. Fear of 9/11.

At The Patriot Project last fall, we explored and exposed this pattern. We were able to begin to bring awareness of this tactic into the media. Many of those posts are here.

Now we are bringing all this experience to Smoking Politics, where we will fight this fight on a daily basis - exposing the lies and smears and sell strategies that the right uses to win elections and destroy our leaders.

We will show, as Swiftboater-financing Sam Fox's recess appointment, and the ongoing US Attorney scandal clearly showcased - that there is a circle of corruption. Right-wing donors pay for the $mears of our leaders and reap financial benefits and appointments and a government that looks the other way. They win elections through fear and $mear. They make money from their victories and the cycle repeats itself.

We think that going into the 2008 election cycle nothing matters as much as this issue - the first thing we have to defeat is this tobacco Fear and $mear strategy that has been so effective at destroying our leaders and building up their own.

We have plenty of time to lay the groundwork on this effort before the 2008 campaign is in full swing. But we don't have sufficient funding to hire the researchers and writers we need. Stay tuned as we will be announcing fundraising events and online fundraising efforts.

And don't forget to tuned to tune into our show today. We look forward to hearing from you.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 9, 2007

Laurie And Sheryl Didn't Make It Very Far Before Exxon Tried To Slash Tour Bus Tires

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce

When Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth won the Oscar for Best Documentary, it didn't take him long to be attacked by the Right Wing $MEAR machine. (And the mainstream media didn't help much but not even checking out the basic facts of the story.)

So this morning when Laurie David and Sheryl Crow kicked off their Stop Global Warming tour, where they are doing outrageous things like discussing the reality of global warming and how concerned college students, aka our nation's future, can become involved, surely you didn't expect the oil companies to let them slide did you. Of course not.

Here are the first couple of shots. One accuses ABC NEWS of letting their on-air talent be used for a "political agenda."

For anyone who wants us to connect the dots, here they are.

1. Newsbusters is a project of The Media Research Center.

2. Media Research Center is, believe it or not, a charitable organization so if you give money to them, you get a tax deduction.

Founded in 1987, the MRC is a 501 (c)(3) non profit research and education foundation.

3. Media Research recently gave Rush Limbaugh an award for "Media Excellence." We can't make this shit up if we tried.

4. And who gives them a nice $50,000 check every year? And gets the tax deduction? ExxonMobil.

Let's be clear.

Global Warming is not a political issue, it is a scientific fact.

The attempt to turn it into a partisan issue is a political issue and is being done by the Right Wing donors, such as ExxonMobil, who have the most to lose if we move to alternative energies. If you can turn it into a political issue, you can begin to hide the facts.

Know the facts, and you know the truth. So get on the bus with Laurie and Sheryl.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 3:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

Racism In The Media - With Update

For those of you who do not know, radio personality (simulcast on MSNBC) Don Imus referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team, which has black members, as "nappy-headed hos." Another guest on the show referred to a game between "The Jigaboos vs. The Wannabees."

Right-wing blogger Macsmind,

Another “White” celebrity in trouble for supposed “racist” remarks, this time it’s Don Imus. [...] this “parsing for racism” ONLY when it’s occurs by whites needs to stop now. ... Until then shut up.

Update - MSNBC today "suspended" Imus for two weeks. MSNBC didn't suspend him after this happened on the show, it suspended him after this started to become a widely discussed issue.

The white boy's club that runs this country...

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

April 4, 2007

As Surely As Night Follows Day - Smears Follow Bush Criticisms

Co-written with James Boyce

The other day in the New York Times, Bush "campaign strategist" Matthew Dowd was quoted saying he had "lost faith" in Bush. From the article, Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd says he has "lost faith in Bush."

"Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush's leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a "my way or the highway" mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides."

As surely as night follows day the right began the smear campaign. Mr. Dowd, you see, is "emotional" and has "personal problems."

Through Think Progress, White House Claims Dowd Is Too Emotional, Turned On Bush Because Of 'Personal Turmoil' and The Huffington Post has the following video in White House Blames Matthew Dowd's Criticism Of Bush On "Personal Problems":

Picking up on the White House's cue, conservative weblog Captains Quarter's, in Dowd Bails On Bush, writes,

The man whom I believed so rational turns out to have run on emotion...

... As much as I like Dowd, and he is a very likable man in person ... boo hoo. I can't believe this Dowd is a grown-up.

... So Bush didn't act as a uniter. Neither did the Democrats, who spent most of the first term calling Bush the "Commander-in-Thief", constantly undermining his authority. ...

... Dowd engages in one long, petulant rant, consumed by his disappointment at Bush's failure to change when Dowd changed. I'm sorry for Dowd's disappointment, but this says much more about Dowd's emotionalism than it does about the Bush administration.

Others chimed in:

Are the Only Republicans in the New York Times' Rolodex Liberal Republicans?,

One of the reasons the Left-Wing Media pulled so hard for Democrats to win back Congress in 2006 is surely that they were sick of going to meetings that didn't matter. Hard to impress Hill interns with your access when all you know are disgruntled Democrats.

And others:

The author of "Flip-Flop" flips

April Fool (but no joke)

And finally President Bush himself, always one to pursue a carefully-crafted talking point, said Dowd is "emotional."

...noting that Mr. Dowd has a son in the Army who is awaiting deployment, Mr. Bush added, "I understand his anguish over war; I understand this is an emotional issue for Matthew, as it is for a lot of other people in our country."

Of course no one in President Bush's family - or few other conservative leaders' families, for that matter - is at risk of being sent to Iraq. The logic apparently being that not having to personally face the consequences of their decisions qualifies them to be deciding issues of war and peace.

Update - From a New York Times editorial today,

"President Bush and his advisers have made a lot of ridiculous charges about critics of the war in Iraq: they're unpatriotic, they want the terrorists to win, they don't support the troops, to cite just a few. But none of these seem quite as absurd as President Bush's latest suggestion, that critics of the war whose children are at risk are too "emotional" to see things clearly.

The direct target was Matthew Dowd, one of the chief strategists of Mr. Bush's 2004 presidential campaign, who has grown disillusioned with the president and the war, which he made clear in an interview with Jim Rutenberg published in The Times last Sunday. But by extension, Mr. Bush's comments were insulting to the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and spouses have served or will serve in Iraq. "

Dave Johnson and James Boyce have spent over a year researching, exposing and trying to stop the Right Wing dual strategy of $ell and $mear. You can read more at www.smokingpolitics.com.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 1:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

Pelosi Wears Scarf - Wingnuts In Full-On Frenzy

Sheesh. Speaker Pelosi wore a head covering whie visiting a mosque, and the right-wingers are in a frothing, seething, full-on anti-Muslim racist frenzy.

Never mind that Laura Bush and Condoleeza Rice ALSO wore headcoverings when visiting mosques, as well as when visiting the Vatican.

So here they go: Pelosi Allows Radical Muslim Propaganda Coup,

"The anti-American propaganda this woman has given the very people who want to totally destroy us is immense."

Here's a good one,

"Tired of being beheaded, hijacked, kidnapped and terrorized? Try Dhimmitude! It's 100% submissive and guaranteed to appease the enemies of freedom. Well, temporally anyway. Because that's all we have to do you know, is just be nice to them. [. . .] The left wants peace at any cost. Terrorism pays."

Another, with a dose of pure anti-Muslim racism:

"I guess the Muslims will give her props for the head scarf, after all she is playing the role of a good dhimmicrat. Then again, depending on how sensitive the Syrians are feeling, she may of sparked another international “Religion of Peace” murderous rage."

See also Has speaker Pelosi committed sedition by her visit to the mideast?

Go see the pics and read The Mahablog : Pelosi Wears Scarf; Righties Bark at Moon

And to really understand America's right, read the 800 comments here.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 13, 2007

Did Clinton Also Fire Prosecutors? - UPDATED -

You're going to hear a story that "Clinton fired 93 prosecutors" when he took office, while this whole prosecutor scandal is about Bush firing only 11.

The fact is that EVERY President changes the US Attorneys when taking office. Bush also did the same thing when he took office. That is different. This has never happened before. THIS scandal is about Bush using the federal prosecutors to only go after Democrats, and to ignore crimes by Republicans.

And here's the thing. The ones that were fired were let go because they wouldn't "play ball." So the question is, what about the ones who were not fired?

It is one more example of how the entire government has been converted into a Party apparatus - as well as working to further the interests of the K-Street/Abramoff corruption machine. You hear about Interior Department employees ordered not to discuss global warming. You hear about the head of HUD telling underlings not to give contracts to Democrats. You hear over and over about "conected" companies getting huge no-bid contracts with no accountability...

IF Bush gets away with this - if the current prosecutors, Attorney General, Bush, etc. remain in place - come election time 2008 the only news the PUBLIC will be hearing is news about federal indictments of corrupt Democrats. That's what this is about.

Update - CREW calls for a Special Prosecutor because obviously the Bush Justice Department isn't going to investigate. But who appoints the special prosecutor?

CREW wants the immediate appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate potential criminal violations related to the recent dismissals of eight U.S. Attorneys. Recent revelations indicate that a top-ranking Department of Justice official knew that statements made by top Department officials were not true. Clearly, the Department of Justice cannot investigate itself and prosecute the misconduct of DOJ officials. CREW also asked the Department of Justice’s Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the situation.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 10, 2007

Rumor About Iraq

A rumor I heard - troops in some areas of Iraq are having food rations cut, having to sign for ammo on a per-round basis, and are being told it is because the Democrats in Congress have cut off the funding for the troops.

This is exactly the kind of thing the Republicans would do. These people will be coming back to the US one day, and they will be angry at the Democrats and Volvo-driving liberals who "betrayed them." Bush started a war and lost it, and The Party is setting up to blame liberals and Democrats for the loss.

Please help - if you are in Iraq or have a friend or relative in Iraq please check on the stories that are circulating and let us know.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 5, 2007

Who They Mean When They Say "Leftists"

A wingnut has a post up with examples of "Hate Speech" by "Prominent Leftists." Go read and have a good laugh.

Louis Farrakhan is a "leftist?" Richard Cohen? Nina Totenberg? Leftists? And I haven't heard of half of them. Am I old or something? "British Pundit Charlie Booker?"

Posted by Dave Johnson at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

Right-Wing Narrative Coming: Government To Blame For VA Mess

Have you been following the Walter Reed & VA Hospital mess? Read this. The Republicans privatized care at Walter Reed (corruptly throwing a contract to the SAME PEOPLE - Republican campaign contributors - who screwed up ice delivery after Katrina). They gutted the professional staff and cut everything so the money would flow to a few rich fucks instead of to caring for the troops.

But what are they telling the public? That it's an example of the problem with GOVERNMENT! After firing all the professional staff and outsourcing everything they're telling people that government can't fire people so they don't care about the troops.

Republicans: Gut the government, pocket the funds, then BLAME the government when things stop working.

Example: NPR : Is Bureaucracy to Blame for Walter Reed Shame?

Example

Newsflash: Government-run health care sucks The Washington Post is back today with another story about the pitfalls of the military health care system.:

Example: Government Healthcare and YOU!

If you’ve been watching the news lately you will most likely will have seen a special or two on the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The men and women who put their lives on the line for their country are being placed in horrible conditions.

... THIS, is what you will get nation wide if you decide to hand over your health care to the federal government.

Example:

If you had any doubts about universal health care, which is to say, health care furnished and managed by the government, examine the complaints about the health care furnished our veteran's by the government.

If they can't get it together to furnish decent health care to our veteran's, what chance do the rest of us have?

Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

March 1, 2007

The Al Gore Lie Is Halfway Around The World And The Truth Is Sitting In Nashville.

By Dave Johnson and James Boyce

There's a tragic but true old expression that a lie can make it half way around the world before the truth can even get its pants on. Sadly, this has been proven true again this week with the $mear attack on Vice President Al Gore and his energy consumption.

Today, we noticed that the lie has made it to Germany. How did this happen and, more to the point, why does it continue to happen?

As Media Matters continues to speak out about every single day - and we all owe them thanks - the corporate media in America absolutely fails to serve the interest of the public. How could they spread this lie? How does a small, unknown organization with a $100,000 budget issue a press release containing a $mear on a respected former Vice President of the United States and have their lie echoed around the world within hours? Pathetic. (Just look at their IRS form! No officers, directors or trustees? Very little information? A P.O. box? Is it normal for an organization to spend that high a percentage of their funds on "meals?") One reporter asking one question about this group, or about the facts behind Gore's energy use, and the story is over. But they didn't.

Furthermore, it's our collective fault. As we noted in our post a few days ago, no one should have been surprised when Al Gore was attacked for the positive press he and his movie received last weekend. An Inconvenient Truth was sure to win an Oscar. Gore would then speak to a billion people about the problem of global warming. The well-funded global warming denial industry would respond, and $mearing people is their standard method of attack. They destroy our leaders.

And yet, there was surprise and a lack of preparation to fight back. How many times will one of our leaders be attacked and be marginalized before we get it through our thick heads that this is a pattern? How many times will this happen before we start to do something about it?

Al Gore was mocked as "ozone man". Max Cleland destroyed. Howard Dean screamed out of town. McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, and Bill Clinton $meared and $meared and even impeached. Then the lies about Al Gore during his campaign against Bush. Then John Kerry swiftboated. Now Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama and John Edwards attacked. They destroy our leaders.

And not only are the targets of the attacks often caught off guard, but the Democratic institutions and leaders are often nowhere to be found when it happens!

Where was the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday and Wednesday as these lies gained hold? Where was any Democratic-oriented Group? There were the progressive bloggers, Media Matters and CAP's Think Progess and very few others -- the usual suspects -- and this is all that Gore and our other leaders have watching their backs. They sure aren't watching each other's.

Last fall, we (James, Dave and Taylor Marsh) worked together on The Patriot Project. We struggled mightily to raise money to help veteran candidates like Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy, Charlie Brown, Jack Murtha and Chris Carney. We raised money online but traditional donors didn't help us. The progressive bloggers are also largely unfunded and are the targets of strategic marginalization attacks themselves. The progressive donor base continues to play it safe and avoid controversy, funding the large, stale, DC-based "traditional" organizations.

And the attacks continue.

When John Kerry was the focus of the machine when he botched his joke, the wingnuts misrepresented what he said and pretended outrage, the right's online sites echoed and amplified the smear, the Drudge Report spread it widely, Limbaugh blasted it out, and then the networks dutifully picked it up and spread the lie to the rest of the country. And not only did no Democrat come to his aid, some actually piled on.

When Nancy Pelosi was $meared with the lie that she "demanded a luxury jet" the wingnuts misrepresented what she said and pretended outrage, the right's online sites echoed and amplified the smear, the Drudge Report spread it widely, Limbaugh blasted it out, and then the networks dutifully picked it up and spread the lie to the rest of the country. But how many leading Democrats and organizations joined forces to protect her?

How many similar episodes have we seen in just the last few months? Where are the Democratic institutions? Where are the other Democratic leaders? Don't they understand that they're next?

And this week here was Al Gore getting blind-sided and the silence was deafening. One more sad but clear example of what ails our party and our leaders.

It is a tragedy.

First the wingnuts came for Bill Clinton,
I remained silent;
I am not Bill Clinton.

When they made up stuff about Gore,
I remained silent;
I am not Gore.

When they lied about John Kerry
I didn't speak up for him;
I complained about how he ran his campaign.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out;
I am a Democrat.

Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:02 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Link Cosmos

February 26, 2007

A Far Too Convenient $mear: Part One - Updated - Rush Update

Co-written with (mostly written by) James Boyce

(Note - visit this follow-up post for a link to Tennessee Center for Policy Research tax forms.)

Did you honestly think that the Right Wing $mear machine was going to let Al Gore stand up with the terrific team who created and direct the movie and receive an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth?"

Did you really believe they would stand by and watch a Democratic leader validated for his life's work?

No chance in hell. As we have said here before, They destroy our leaders. Note to Senator Obama: spare us the hope and bi-partisanship talk and help us fight back.

Here's what we know, what we think, what we're trying to find out and how you can help.

Last night, Al Gore got very favorable national press and worldwide television exposure.

This afternoon, a group calling itself "The Tennessee Center For Policy Research" sent out a press release denouncing Vice President Gore for the size of his household electrical bills.

Let's start right there. How did they get the utility bills? They also didn't have the courtesy to ask Vice President Gore about them (despite their hollow claim of being non-partisan.) And why would a "think tank" possibly care about what Al Gore spends on gas?

Actually, let's start with a more basic question. Who are these people? Well , a quick check of Alexa reveals their web site gets no traffic. Are they legitimate? Well, again, th