The Snake Oil Salesmen

October 25th, 2006

James Dobson, he of theocratic intention, Big Daddy of Focus on the Family and personal spiritual guru to our own Leader Dearest, is flooding my states radio airwaves with ads warning about human cloning — the ads are paid for by a Baptist organization. Stem cell is a big issue on November’s ballot here, and this is the state running the ads by Mike Fox that a bloviating Rush has questioned in the vilest terms, turning even the hardest heart a little squishy.

Dobson, of course, is the man who has declared biblical war on just about everything most of us believe and who advocates not only child-beating and keeping women in their “place,” but is sure he can change gays into straights with a rigorous course of enlightenment and discipline. [Sounds a little "closeted," doesn't it?]

The warnings were all in place that this campaign season would be “dirty” — I’d say it has been LOW. They’ve appealed to our lowest common denominator … fear, racism, sexism, religious bias and skewed patriotism. All the things wrong with us … all the things we need to overcome and move past … all the things that are buried in our psyche and need to be exorcised.

Historians say that there have been attacks such as this since the first elections in this country. I say that’s no excuse — after 230 years, we should have learned a LITTLE something; mankind should have gained SOME emotional ground.

Evidently not.

What they’re saying and doing, below — and another dynamite Olbermann; as his ratings are up, they’re letting him say what he wants. Such is the power of Capitalism. Find a need and fill it … if you’re offering what the public wants, they’ll come to you.

Wish the Democrats would figure that out … and offer us what we want. With the exception of Dobson and his sheep, we’d all come running. Instead of harping about what the Dubby’s DONE, let’s talk about what he WILL do:

Want Social Security gutted next year? Vote Republican.

Want endless treasure poured into Iraq and more troops killed and maimed? Vote Republican.

Want Halliburton to walk off with billions more, unchecked? Vote Republican.

Want science and global warming ignored for two more years? Vote Republican.

Want the attack on the middle class to continue and the rich made richer? Vote Republican.

See? That’s not so hard … it’s what the Pub’s do, and are doing as we speak … and that’s the [very] short list. We all know what they’ve done … it’s what they WILL do, so EASILY predictable given their record, that should turn the votes Blue. And with each projection of what the Pubs have in mind, the Dems could tell us how they’ll fix that. Pelosi is taking a shot at that with her “First Hundred Hours” gambit … but it has that Senatorial ring to it, kind of Kerry-esqe, that’s putting the public to sleep [except for the horrified Pubs who are talking it up.]

Do see the last piece for a very clever way we can all help, copped from the Pub’s playbook. Something to do if you’re bored … or peck away at if you’re busy. [And note the play on Dubby's use of the Internets ... and his visits to The Google.]

Jude

Advertising Terrorism
The key to terrorism is not the act - but the fear of the act.
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC Countdown
Monday 23 October 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102406J.shtml
[open for video]

Tonight, a special comment on the advertising of terrorism - the commercial you have already seen.

It is a distillation of everything this administration and the party in power have tried to do these last five years and six weeks.

It is from the Republican National Committee;

It shows images of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri;

It offers quotes from them - all as a clock ticks ominously in the background.

It concludes with what Zawahiri may or may not have said to a Pakistani journalist as long ago as 2001: His dubious claim that he had purchased “suitcase bombs.”

The quotation is followed (by sheer coincidence no doubt) by an image of a massive explosion.

“These are the stakes,” appears on the screen, quoting exactly from Lyndon Johnson’s infamous nuclear scare commercial from 1964.

“Vote - November 7th.”

There is a cheap “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” quality to the whole thing, and it also serves to immediately call to mind the occasions when President Bush dismissed Osama bin Laden as somebody he didn’t think about - except, obviously, when elections were near.

Frankly, a lot of people seeing that commercial for the first time, have laughed out loud.

But - not everyone.

And therein lies the true threat to this country.

The dictionary definition of the word “terrorize” is simple and not open to misinterpretation:

“To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear.”

Note please, that the words “violence” and “death” are missing from that definition.

The key to terror, the key to terrorism, is not the act - but the fear of the act.

That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotaped statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings.

But why is the Republican Party imitating them?

Bin Laden puts out what amounts to a commercial of fear; The Republicans put out what is unmistakable as a commercial of fear.

The Republicans are paying to have the messages of bin Laden and the others broadcast into your home.

Only the Republicans have a bigger bank roll.

When, last week, the CNN network ran video of an insurgent in Iraq, evidently stalking and killing an American soldier, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. Hunter, Republican of California, branded that channel, quote, “the publicist for an enemy propaganda film” and that CNN used it “to sell commercials.”

Another California Republican, Rep. Brian Bilbray, called the video “nothing short of a terrorist snuff film.”

If so, Mr. Bilbray, then what in the hell is your Party’s new advertisement?

And Mr. Hunter, CNN using the video to “sell commercials”?

Commercials!

You have adopted bin Laden and Zawahiri as spokesmen for the Republican National Committee!

“To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear.”

By this definition, the people who put these videos together - first the terrorists and then the administration - whose shared goal is to scare you into panicking instead of thinking - they are the ones terrorizing you.

By this definition, the leading terrorist group in this world right now is al Qaida.

But the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.

Eleven Presidents ago, a chief executive reassured us that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

His distant successor has wasted his administration insisting that there is nothing we can have but fear itself.

The vice president, as recently as this month, was caught campaigning with the phrase “mass death in the United States.”

Four years ago it was the now-Secretary of State, Dr. Rice, rationalizing Iraq with “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Days later Mr. Bush himself told an audience that “we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

And now we have this cheesy commercial - complete with images of a faked mushroom cloud, and implications of “mass death in America.”

This administration has derived benefit and power from terrorizing the very people it claims to be protecting from terror.

It may be the oldest trick in the political book: scare people into believing they are in danger and that only you can save them.

Lyndon Johnson used it to bury Barry Goldwater.

Joe McCarthy leaped from obscurity on its back.

And now the legacy has come to President George Bush.

Of course, the gruel of fear is getting thinner and thinner, is it not, Mr. President?

And thus more and more of it needs to be made out of less and less actual terror.

After last week’s embarrassing Internet hoax about ‘dirty bombs’ at football stadiums, the one your Department of Homeland Security immediately disseminated to the public, a self-described “former CIA operative” named Wayne Simmons, cited the fiasco as “the, and I mean the, perfect example of the President’s Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program - how vital they are.”

Frank Gaffney, once a respected assistant secretary of defense and now the president of something called the Center for Security Policy, added, “one of the things that I hope Americans take away from this, is not only that they’re gunning for us not just in a place like Iraq - but truly, worldwide.”

Of course, the “they” to which Mr. Gaffney referred, turned out to be a lone 20-year-old grocery bagger from Wisconsin named Jake - a kid, trying to one-up some other loser in an Internet game of chicken.

His “threat,” referenced seven football stadiums at which dirty bombs were to be exploded yesterday. It began with the one in New York City - even though there isn’t one in New York City. And though the attacks were supposed to be simultaneous, four of the games were scheduled to start at 1 p.m. ET and the others at 4 p.m. ET.

More over, the kid said he’d posted the identical message on 40 websites since September.

We caught him in “merely” about six weeks, even though the only way he could have been less subtle, less stealthy, and less of a threat was if he’d bought an advertisement on the Super Bowl broadcast.

Mr. Bush, this is the - what? - 100th plot your people have revealed, that turned out to be some nonsensical misunderstanding, or the fabrications of somebody hoping to talk his way off a water board in Eastern Europe?

If, Mr. President, this is the kind of crack work that your new ad implies that only you and not the Democrats can do, you, sir, need to pull over and ask for directions.

The real question of course, Mr. Bush, is why did your Department of Homeland Security even release this information in the first place?

It was never a serious threat. Even the first news accounts quoted a Homeland spokesman as admitting “strong skepticism” - the kind of strong skepticism which most government agencies address before telling the public, not afterwards.

So that leaves two options, Mr. President.

The first option: you and your department of Homeland Security don’t have the slightest idea what you’re doing. Thus, contrary to your flip-flopping between saying “we’re safe” and saying “but we’re not safe enough,” and contrary to the vice president’s swaggering pronouncements about the lack of another attack since 9/11, the last five years has been just an accident.

Or there’s the second option: your political operatives leaked this nonsense for the same reason your political operatives put out that commercial - to scare the gullible.

Obviously the correct answer, Mr. Bush, is all of the above.

There are some of us who could forgive you for trying to run your candidates on the coattails of the Grim Reaper, for reducing your party’s existence to “Death and Attacks Us.”

It’s cynical and barbaric.

But, after all, it may be merely the natural extension of the gutter politics to which you have subscribed since you sidled over from baseball, and the business world of other people’s money.

But to forgive you for terrorizing us, we would have to believe you somehow competent in keeping others from doing so.

Yet, last week, construction workers repairing a subway line in New York City, were cleaning out an abandoned manhole on the edge of the World Trade Center site, when they stumbled on to the impossible: human remains from 9/11.

Bones and fragments.

Eighty of them.

Some as much as a foot long.

The victims had been lying, literally in the gutter, for five years and five weeks.

The families and friends of each of the 2,749 dead - who had been grimly told in May of 2002 that there were no more remains to be found - were struck anew as if the terrorism of that day had just happened again.

And over the weekend they’ve found still more remains.

And now this week will be spent looking in places that should have already been looked at a thousand times five years ago.

For all the victims in New York, Mr. Bush - the living and the dead - it’s a touch of 9/11 all over again.

And the mayor of this city, who called off the search four-and-a-half years ago is a Republican.

The governor of this state with whom he conferred is a Republican.

The House of Representatives, Republican.

The Senate, Republican.

The President, Republican.

And yet you can actually claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?

You can’t even recover our dead from the battlefield - the battlefield in an American city - when we’ve given you five years and unlimited funds to do so!

While signing a Military Commissions Act so monstrous that it has been criticized by even the John Birch Society, you told us, Mr. Bush, “there is nothing we can do to bring back the men and women lost on September 11th, 2001. Yet we’ll always honor their memory, and we will never forget the way they were taken from us.”

Except, of course, for the ones who’ve been lying under a manhole cover for five years.

Setting aside the fact that your government has done nothing else for those five years but pat yourselves on the back about terror, while waging pointless war on the wrong enemy in Iraq, and waging war on the cherished freedoms in America;

Just on this subject of counter-terrorism, sir, yours is the least competent government, in time of crisis, in this country’s history!

“These are the stakes,” indeed, Mr. President.

You do not know what you are doing.

And the commercial - the one about which Zawahiri might say “hey, pretty good - we love your choice of font style”?

All that need further be said is to add three words to Shakespeare.

Mr. President, you, and that advertisement of terror, are full of sound and fury - signifying (and competent at) nothing.

~ from http://www.mediamatters.org

Last week on his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity encouraged Democratic voters to “stay home on Election Day,” adding that, “your vote doesn’t matter anyway.” He asserted that Democrats should not turn out to vote “for the sake of the nation” because Democrats’ votes “won’t change who occupies the White House” and Democratic “candidates have absolutely no idea how to win the war on terrorism.”

On the same program, Hannity misrepresented the Democratic Party platform, stating: “I don’t think abandoning our troops on the battlefield, or closing your eyes to enemy communications or listening to enemy communications in our country, or killing the economy, or supporting illegal immigration, I don’t think that’s something to run on.”

Comments like this demonstrate how Hannity and other right-wing media figures hope to impact the upcoming election — regardless of their spin about being objective.

It’s Just A Shot Away
by digby
http://tinyurl.com/uldfh

According to the General, during last nights debate, Sen. Lieberman, noting Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, declared, “We’re in another time like that.”

That’s delusional BS. We’re in another time like this:

Open link to watch Lamont ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df1KuS_ziRg

NAACP: Tenn. Senate ad plays to racism
BETH RUCKER, AP
Wed Oct 25
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061025/ap_on_el_se/tennessee_senate_ad

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A political TV ad targeting a black candidate for Senate contains what critics, including the NAACP, are calling racist sexual innuendo about a black man and white woman.

The Republican National Committee ad began airing Friday and features a series of characters facetiously declaring their support for Democrat Harold Ford Jr., a Memphis congressman who faces Republican Bob Corker, who is white, in the Nov. 7 election. Polls have shown the two locked in a tight race.

In the ad, a blond white woman brags, “I met Harold at the Playboy party.” At the end she looks into the camera, holds her hand like a telephone and says, “Harold, call me,” before winking.

The line is an apparent reference to Ford’s attendance at a Playboy Super Bowl party in Jacksonville, Fla., last year.

“I was there. I like football, and I like girls,” Ford said Tuesday.

“I don’t think they’re doing it to talk about the goodness of me or the goodness of my opponent,” Ford said. “They want to scare people about me.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People criticized the ad.

“It is a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women,” Hilary Shelton, head of the Washington NAACP office, told the Los Angeles Times.

The Corker campaign denounced the ad, saying it is “tacky, over the top and is not reflective of the kind of campaign we are running.”

RNC spokesman Danny Diaz has defended the ad’s accuracy and said it will run its full course. It cost $457,944 to buy the time for the ad, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Because the ad was created by an outside group that contracts with the Republican National Committee, neither the RNC nor Corker’s campaign saw it in advance and can’t order it to be taken off the air.

Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act passed by Congress in 2002, political parties can pay for “independent expenditure” advertisements against opponents that do not count against legal spending limits on campaigns. But the party is not allowed to play any role in creating the ad or deciding how and when it will be used.

Former Clinton Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, also a former Republican senator from Maine, said on CNN that the ad was “a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment.”

Rush Limbaugh On the Offensive Against Ad With Michael J. Fox
David Montgomery, Washington Post
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/24/AR2006102400691_pf.html

Possibly worse than making fun of someone’s disability is saying that it’s imaginary. That is not to mock someone’s body, but to challenge a person’s guts, integrity, sanity.

To Rush Limbaugh on Monday, Michael J. Fox looked like a faker. The actor, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, has done a series of political ads supporting candidates who favor stem cell research, including Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin, who is running against Republican Michael Steele for the Senate seat being vacated by Paul Sarbanes.

“He is exaggerating the effects of the disease,” Limbaugh told listeners. “He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. . . . This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting.”

Limbaugh, whose syndicated radio program has a weekly audience of about 10 million, was reacting to Fox’s appearance in another one of the spots, for Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, running against Republican Sen. James M. Talent.

But the Cardin ad is similar. It is hard to watch, unless, for some reason, you don’t believe it. As he speaks, Fox’s restless torso weaves and writhes in a private dance. His head bobs from side to side, almost leaving the video frame.

“This is the only time I’ve ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has,” Limbaugh said. “He can barely control himself.”

Later Monday, still on the air, Limbaugh would apologize, but reaction to his statements from Parkinson’s experts and Fox’s supporters was swift and angry.

“It’s a shameless statement,” John Rogers said yesterday. Rogers, Fox’s political adviser, who also serves on the board of the Parkinson’s Action Network, added: “It’s insulting. It’s appallingly sad, at best.”

“Anyone who knows the disease well would regard his movement as classic severe Parkinson’s disease,” said Elaine Richman, a neuroscientist in Baltimore who co-wrote “Parkinson’s Disease and the Family.” “Any other interpretation is misinformed.”

Fox was campaigning yesterday for Tammy Duckworth, a congressional candidate, outside Chicago, when he alluded to Limbaugh’s remarks. “It’s ironic, given some of the things that have been said in the last couple of days, that my pills are working really well right now,” he said, according to a report on the CBS2 Web site.

After his apology, Limbaugh shifted his ground and renewed his attack on Fox.

“Now people are telling me they have seen Michael J. Fox in interviews and he does appear the same way in the interviews as he does in this commercial,” Limbaugh said, according to a transcript on his Web site. “All right then, I stand corrected. . . . So I will bigly, hugely admit that I was wrong, and I will apologize to Michael J. Fox, if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act.”

Then Limbaugh pivoted to a different critique: “Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democratic politician.”

Limbaugh’s shock at Fox’s appearance is a measure of the disease’s devastation, advocates say. Contrary to the charge that Fox might not take his medicine to enhance his symptoms, the medicine produces some of the uncontrolled body movements.

“Stem cell research offers hope to millions of Americans with diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” Fox says in the Cardin ad. “But George Bush and Michael Steele would put limits on the most promising stem cell research.”

Fox has appeared in ABC’s “Boston Legal” this season. In his scenes, taped over the summer, Fox does not shake or loll his head as he does in the Cardin commercial, but does appear to be restraining himself, appearing almost rigid at times.

A source with direct knowledge of Fox’s illness who viewed the Cardin ad said Fox is not acting to exaggerate the effects of the disease. The source said Fox’s scenes in “Boston Legal” had to be taped around his illness, as he worked to control the tremors associated with Parkinson’s for limited periods of time.

Santorum is the only thing standing between us and fascism
October 24, 2006
http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/8854.html

In May 2005, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) raised a few eyebrows when, during a debate on the “nuclear option,” he compared Democrats’ approach to Bush’s judicial nominees to Adolf Hitler in Paris in 1942.

Some of the cooler heads among us argued that Santorum was not necessarily drawing a moral parallel; he was only using World War II as an “easily understood historical reference.” Maybe so.

But how about this one?

Likening the times to the late 1930s as Nazi Germany was rising to power, Sen. Rick Santorum said last night that if he loses his re-election bid, it could set the stage for terrorism to become more of a threat than the Nazis ever were.

“If we are not successful here and things don’t go right in the election, there’s a good chance that the course of our country could change,” he said. “We are in the equivalent of the late 1930s, and this election will decide whether we are going to continue to appease or whether we will stand and fight while we have a chance to win without devastating consequences.

“And you here in Pennsylvania — you here in this room — will have a huge role to play as to what happens.”

What?

In 2004, Dick Cheney told audiences that if voters backed Kerry-Edwards, the United States would get “hit again” by terrorists. It was one of the more startling instances of the GOP using the politics of fear — vote for us or you could very well die.

But Santorum seems to be taking matters considerably further. If Pennsylvanians don’t vote for him, there’s a “good chance” terrorists will start taking over countries and posing a Nazi-like risk to the world. Without Rick Santorum, the U.S. will embrace appeasement. Santorum will, apparently, single-handedly save civilization against a terrorist nightmare, which only he fully appreciates. A vote against Santorum not only opens the door to more attacks, it undermines the future of our very society.

I’ve heard of delusions of grandeur, but this is ridiculous….

James Dobson: “I have never seen such hatred in my life. I am being bludgeoned”
Children Will Be Targeted if States Change Marriage Definition, He Warns
Gudrun Schultz
Friday October 20, 2006
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/oct/06102005.html

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, October 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The social consequences of a liberal victory in the coming elections will be grave, particularly for children, Dr. James Dobson warned in a radio broadcast urging pro-family voters to go to the polls.

Dr. Dobson accused the national media of attempting to influence pro-family voters to stay home. Despite media efforts to convince “values voters” that the issue of homosexual marriage is no longer of central importance, Dr. Dobson said, activists’ push for same-sex “rights” is increasingly focused on the next generation.

“Children are being targeted,” Dr. Dobson stated. “If one of these states do not confirm traditional marriage, adoption laws will change. Those put in foster care will be placed in different kinds of homes, the training foster care parents receive will be consistent with the homosexual perspective.”

Dobson said the key significance of the coming elections is evident in media attacks on pro-family supporters.

“I have never seen such hatred in my life. I am being bludgeoned,” Dobson said, making reference to an NBC broadcaster who allegedly referred to him as ‘the worst man in the world.’ “Why? Why now? Well, it’s not really personal to me. But they identify me as one of the people who turned out the values voters last time–and they are determined to never, ever let it happen again.”

“If people of faith–the so-called values voters–don’t come out and let their voices be heard, there are going to be some major implications for this country”, he said. “There are these statements from the media that values voters don’t care this year and that they’re going to stay home.”

Recent efforts by the California legislature to pass a measure mandating the inclusion of pro-homosexual material in all public school curricula, beginning with kindergarten, was a vivid example of the child-oriented goals in the homosexual activist movement, Dr. Dobson pointed out.

“Teaching five year olds about adult perverse behavior instead of fairy tales is unconscionable.”

While the California measure was vetoed on the last day possible by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, it had passed the Assembly and Senate by a wide margin despite a national and state-wide outcry by parents and pro-family organizations–an example, Dobson said, of the lack of any accountability on the part of those behind the pro-homosexual movement.

Bombing The Google
by digby
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
[open to get links -- do click if you have a chance]

Back in 2004, the rightwing bloggers came up with the idea of google bombing the name John Kerry so that negative articles came up first on the search page when people googled his name. it worked.

Chris Bowers decided we should do the same thing with our wonderful GOP opponents this time and has come up with a handy list of links to make this easy.

So, while you are on hold on the phone today or sitting in a boring meeting or simply looking to kill a couple of minutes, click on the links below and help us bring the truth about these Republicans to the top of the Google search pages.

Update: Never mind. You don’t have to click on the links (although you might learn more about why you hate these candidates.) Just post the links on whatever site on which you have posting privileges or on your own blog. Mr. Google will do the rest.

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) adult credit sex teens cams chat500 casino sets chipexpress credit american addwordscasino against gamblingcredit elements adobe roll premiere tutorial2007 codes no deposit casinofree play hr online 1 casinoscredit assessment portfolio accredited based Map

Entry Filed under: Political Waves