Tag: Propaganda

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…if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people – their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties..if that is what they mean by a “liberal” then I am proud to be a liberal.

          —    John F. Kennedy

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In the conservative world, the word “liberal” is often used as a smear and an epithet in an attempt to denounce anyone who they dislike or who stands opposed to their ideas and idiot ideology. But now, after seven years of utter disaster at the hands of a conservative Administration — one that inherited a conservative Republican majority in Congress, only to lose it six years later — the nation and Conservatives have seen the disaster that their beliefs and policies lead to in terms of economic, political, military and social debacles, any one of which should give any sane citizen pause.

Conservatives, however, are not ones to reflect or reconsider failed positions or evidence that their flawed approach to government, to money, to military and political strategy and to social reform are simply bad policy.

Via PrgrsvArchitect on a comment over in a DailyKos Open Thread, here:

Just out from the Center for Public Integrity

http://www.publicintegrity.org/…

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

President Bush, for example, made 231 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Heh. Right from the horses ass mouth primary oratory orifice.

This evening I received an email forwarded by the animal behaviorist who helped us with Jack, our Alaskan Malamute, who had some initial behavioral issues.

She had received it apparently by mistake, but forwarded it on to her clients for dissemination and feedback.

I’m plopping it on DailyKos, ePluribus Media and Docudharma to open a discussion on other issues and where candidates stand on them.

I’d like folks who know of a candidate’s actions with regard to animals to put the candidate’s last name first in their subject, then ” — good” or ” — bad” next to the name, and have the content of the comment itself contain any good, bad, or additional information. I hope to tally this up later and present results. Please don’t get into candidate wars; just post what you can verify and include a link to support your statement.  Please note that this also includes Republican candidates; please follow the same procedure, if you’ve information to add.

Thank you.

Well if you were wondering exactly who decides that every move Britney Spears makes is newsworthy, look no farther than the GOP-worshipping Associated Press.  

An AP internal memo reads as follows:

From: Baker, Frank S.

Sent: Tue 1/8/2008 11:58 AM

To: News – Southern California Editorial Staff

Subject: Britney

All:

Now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal. That doesn’t mean every rumor makes it on the wire. But it does mean that we want to pay attention to what others are reporting and seek to confirm those stories that WE feel warrant the wire. And when we determine that we’ll write something, we must expedite it.

Thanks.

Frank

I’ve been preparing my home for a surgery trip with my son and listening to CNN this morning while doing it.  Dubya comes on giving a speech and is being applauded when he says something about our efforts in Iraq addressing our war on terror problems.  I pop my head around the corner and the screen says he’s giving this speech live from the Heritage Foundation……UGH!

Propaganda has been around since human beings began habituating the earth at it existed in the simplest of forms: the spoken word or the painted picture. But, over time as people have grown more sophisticated so has propaganda and how it is delivered. As the average person has moved away from receiving their news in the printed form to relying on the broadcast media the sound byte has become the outlet of choice for the delivery of propaganda. Considering the power of that medium and the presentation of the news its not surprising then that large majorities would come to believe what was being delivered as news was the truth because no one chose to refute it.