Let’s Just Lie — ‘Occupy Shooter’

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Dave Johnson

The latest corporate/conservative media smear on the Occupy movement (but just the latest of a long list) is that the deranged person who shot at the White House is somehow “tied to” Occupy.

First, a few facts. Last Friday Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired several shots at the White House. According to reports, Ortega-Hernandez believed that Obama was “the devil” and “the anti-Christ” and that he “will not stop until it’s done.” More recently a video has shown up in the news in which he says, “It’s not just a coincidence that I look like Jesus. I am the modern-day Jesus Christ that you all have been waiting for.”

It was reported on Wednesday that investigators had determined that Ortega-Hernandez had “no connection” with the Occupy movement.

In trying to determine why he recently traveled to the nation’s capital from the western part of the country, investigators searched the Occupy D.C. campground near the White House but have found no connection between him and the Occupy protesters, according to three law enforcement officials familiar with the case.

One of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said the motive for the gunfire might have been simple anger: Ortega-Hernandez “hates the president, he hates Washington, he hates society,” the official said.

But one thing we know about the corporate/conservative media disinformation machine is they just lie.

Politico: An Occupy shooter?

Wall Street Journal: Networks Ignore Reports That White House Shooter May Have Spent Time at Occupy D.C.

FOX News: Man Linked to ‘Occupy’ Protest Charged With Attempted Assassination of Obama

FOX News: ‘Occupy’ Protestors Honor White House Shooter with Moment of Silence

Rush Limbaugh: Guy Who Shot at White House Lived in Occupy DC Camp

NRA Radio: NRA Radio Smears Occupy Movement With White House Shooting (Media Matters)

International Business Times: White House Shooting Suspect Linked to Occupy Rally?

Glenn Beck claimed the hooter was involved with the Occupy movement.

Human Events: Occupy DC Protester Shoots At White House With Assault Rifle

Brietbart: Could a Possible #OccupyWallStreet Connection Explain Lack of MSM’s White House Shooting Coverage?

Breitbart: >Predictable: New York Times Buries White House Shooter’s #Occupy Connection

RW Blogs:

White House Shooter & Occupy DC Protester Oscar Ortega-Hernandez Arrested in PA

Is Oscar Ortega, White House Shooting Suspect, Connected to Occupy DC?

Park Police: Suspect arrested in WH shooting might have spent time at Occupy DC protests

White House Shooter Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez OccupyDC participant?

And dozens of others. That’s how they do it: make shit up, spread it around. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

See also: Think Progress, Media Matters.

Posted in Let's Just Lie, Propaganda, Smears | Tagged | 1 Comment

Let’s Just Lie — ‘Americans are lazy’

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Dave Johnson

Watch this Rick Perry ad that starts with a flat-out lie: The President thinks that what is wrong with America is that Americans are lazy.

David Weigel at Slate has the story in, No, President Obama Didn’t “Call Americans Lazy”,

The clip that begins the ad is taken completely out of context. It’s from a Q&A at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit. The question, and the answer, were about the government’s role in making America a more attractive place to invest, not about the relative get-up-and-go of Americans.

QUESTION: I think one related question, looking at the world from the Chinese side, is what they would characterize as impediments to investment in the United States. And so that discussion I’m sure will be part of whatever dialogue you have. And so how are you thinking about that?

OBAMA: Well, this is an issue, generally. I think it’s important to remember that the United States is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world. And there are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity — our stability, our openness, our innovative free market culture.
But we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America. And so one of things that my administration has done is set up something called SelectUSA that organizes all the government agencies to work with state and local governments where they’re seeking assistance from us, to go out there and make it easier for foreign investors to build a plant in the United States and put outstanding U.S. workers back to work in the United States of America.

Start getting used to this sort of thing. You’re going to see a lot of it.

Posted in Candidates, Let's Just Lie, Smears | Tagged | 1 Comment

Prop Mail – The Flea Party

Posted on November 17, 2011 by James Boyce

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and so too is the nature of the people protesting you. A Tea Party email is going around today depicting the Tea Party as nothing more than a group of wonderful Americans who love their country who just feel gosh dog it that maybe we pay a bit more in taxes than we should.

On the other hand, there is what is now being described with great glee as “The Flea Party” – this is the branding being put forward about the Occupy Movement.

Let’s not forget that the Tea Party is the one who has the lovely bumper sticker with a noose and the line “Support Bush” and a number of other equally racist and pro-violence claims, “We Came Unarmed. This Time.”

We should also consider that Tea Party rallies are, compared to the current Occupy movement, few and far between and certainly don’t have hundreds or thousands of people camping out, in close quarters.

But this branding will work. We even see it in the coverage of the man who shot the automatic weapon at The White House; Fox News asking

Did White House Shooter Come From Occupy Movement?

This is the Right Wing Noise Machine World we live in. The people who carry the signs calling for concealed weapons, lynchings and telling people the President is a ‘nigga’, those are the patriots. The people who want health care for all Americans and want the banks to pay for their mistakes, well, they are anarchists.

Don’t be surprised if anarchists are not the new socialists, a favorite and wonderfully false claim on the Tea Partiers.

Final thought: ironically the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party share one very important trait, deep anger and uncertainty and resentment of where the country is. Both groups are saying enough is enough, it’s time to make changes. The two groups have far more in common than we might think.

 

 

Posted in Prop Mail | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Prop Mail – General Electric Moving Jobs To China?

Posted on November 15, 2011 by James Boyce

This is a quick post about one of our new themes here at Smoking Politics, and that’s the use of email, usually slanted or down right false, as a communication target for the right.

Here is a perfect example – and consider that an email like this can reach literally hundreds of thousands of people in just hours.

The email implies that General Electric is closing an plant in the Midwest and moving the jobs to China. But what they are really doing as nicely debunked by Snopes is opening a facility in China that will result in no job losses in the United States.

But that’s not what you would get by getting this in your inbox.

“General Electric Moving Jobs To China.”

The whole email and the facts are here, courtesy of Snopes.

There are two other pieces of interesting messaging in here. First, the focus on Jeffrey Immelt, who is a life-long Republican and whose appointment by Obama drew criticism from the Left.

Second there is a very interesting anger at GE not paying U.S. taxes. In a right wing prop email, to have this as a criticism of Obama is fascinating, because, of course, both parties have contributed to the disgrace of corporations not paying U.S. taxes, it does not stretch credibility to say this is primarily a by-product of Republican priorities.

 

 

 

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Bachman, Rove, Palin And The Right’s Increasingly Distant Relationship With Reality.

Posted on November 14, 2011 by James Boyce

Steve Benen and Greg Sargent have written some pretty sharp and strong posts about Karl Rove’s Crossroads group and the ads they have been running, one of which is so blatantly false that it’s been taken off the air.

From Steve’s article, here is the low-down on the ‘claim’ of that ad that ran against Jon Tester.

In it, Tester is accused of supporting an Environmental Protection Agency rule — a rule that was never in fact proposed — to regulate farm dust. But the vote that the ad cites actually had nothing to do with dust or the EPA; it was a procedural vote on a measure aimed at cracking down on China for manipulating currency.

The poster child for the lack of fact-based politicking this cycle of course has been Michelle Bachmann who keeps saying things that are blatantly false and then really doesn’t bat an eye when corrected and just keeps going.

Steve and Greg’s articles detail the claims far better than I could, but I wanted to step back and look at how this clearly showcases the marketing strategy Dave and I have been writing about for five years. And how, with the downfall of traditional media, it’s getting worse and worse.

Imagine for a moment you were going to advertise a product, you were in charge of creating an advertising campaign for a car. Now, your car was slower, more expensive and used more gas than any other car. You’d kind of start wondering how to advertise this car right? Not if you are Karl Rove.

You know that you can claim this car is the ‘fastest in its class’ and maybe you would. And no one calls you on it. No one says ‘that is false.’ Sure people grumble and moan so feeling a bit emboldened, next year when the new model comes out, it’s “fastest in its class” and it’s “less than any competitor.” Now a simple fact check would show this to be false but you know, no one checks the facts.

A few years later, you can only imagine the advertising for this car. It will improve your sex life, cost next to nothing and cure cancer on the side.

The Right are becoming gluttons of disinformation and false claims. They are living high on the hog because after the success of the Swift Boat Veterans which compared to the Tester ad above seems like fact-based reporting, at least John Kerry was actually in Vietnam, the far right is going farther and farther afield from the facts.

Remember Sarah Palin’s false claim about Paul Revere?

The one that:

Even Chris Wallace cannot help laughing at this preposterous grifter. But creepier still is the fact that her cult followers responded to this perfectly predictable gaffe by trying to edit the Wikipedia entry on Revere to align it with Palin’s ramblings about his “warning the British” that … oh, let’s not even bother.

Check out this surreal Wiki page in which the cultists are trying to insist that Revere did indeed warn the British, and use Palin’s own quote as a source!

So now, this is the ultimate example of facts not matter. Caught saying something that is absolutely factually wrong, and clearly caught, well, then instead of admitting you are wrong, let’s change the fact.

Voter Emptor.

 

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Follow Us On Facebook And Twitter.

Posted on November 10, 2011 by James Boyce

Thanks for visiting Smoking Politics and, of course, you are welcome here anytime.

You can also follow us on Facebook and on Twitter.

Thanks again for your help and support.

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I Read The News Today Oh Boy.

Posted on November 9, 2011 by James Boyce

We often focus, and frankly understandably so, on the big deceptions the Right plays because it’s hard not to notice the impact of climate change denial.

But those big deceptions are really, in some ways, a thousand small deceptions carried out all day every day, for weeks and months and years. Pay close attention to, or perhaps believe, all these smaller deceptions and next thing you know, Michelle Bachman starts making sense.

This morning, have followed some strong Democratic and Progressive issues like the voting down of the collective bargaining law in Ohio, I was genuinely interested in how the Right was spinning last night. So I went to Drudge Report.

Now, first, before we get into specifics, remember that Drudge is read literally by tens of millions of people every month, a huge number of journalists and editors get their ideas there of what’s happening in the world and a large percentage of those reading Drudge don’t actually know that it is a Far Right Echo Chamber super site. They actually think it’s real news, fairly presented.

So what did they see this morning?

Well, Dave has already addressed the Christmas Tree Tax issue right here.

But again, the biggest political news last night was the overwhelming reversal of Governor Kasich’s assault on union rights. It’s nowhere to be found. On the left, we have four links about Herman Cain, the conclusion from these links? Women accusing Cain are finacially-motivated and perhaps linked to Obama? Essentially Drudge is washing Cain’s laundry for him

In the middle, we learn that Ohio voters have opted out of the health care mandate but, since we’re talking Ohio Matt, how about a note about the vote on the union law? No such hope. We also have an unflattering picture and a story about the emergency system and a note about Gingrich. Now, his campaign is really dead in the water but he is the ‘tortoise’ so maybe he has some hope right?

On the right, we have immigration handled nicely. It’s literally a ‘border’ war, we’ve had to break out the SWAT teams. Clearly, we are a nation in need of a wall, or a fence, or something to prevent what is almost war. Fannie Mae is costing us MORE money and then we learn that being married to Barack Obama is ‘scary.’

That’s it, that’s the above the fold headlines from Drudge. That’s it. Nothing about the people in Mississippi voting down the horrible warped ‘personhood’ amendment. Nothing about some strong Democratic gains or some strong Democratic holds.

Nothing. And we wonder why no one knows what’s happening in our country?

 

 

 

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Let’s Just Lie — ‘Christmas Tree Tax’

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Dave Johnson

Here’s how propaganda works. You start with a narrative, and then you twist every current events story to confirm the narrative. Here is an example: the ‘Christmas Tree Tax.’

Narrative: “Democrats tax and spend.” Second narrative, “Democrats hate Christians.”

Current event: The Christmas tree industry wants to promote natural Christmas trees because more and more people are using artificial trees. So they all got together and agreed to chip in and do a joint promotion, like the “Got Milk?” campaign by milk producers. They needed agriculture department approval before doing this jointly, and it just came through. Details: Christmas tree farmers hope ads will stem growth of artificial trees

Following an extended debate that pit one region against another, the Agriculture Department on Tuesday gave the green light to a new industry-funded Christmas tree promotion program.

By taxing themselves, growers will raise $2 million a year for ads promoting the merits of real, live trees. Or, at least, trees that once were living, as opposed to the artificial kind that have seized an increasing share of the holiday market.

… Akin to similar programs that promote milk, beef and cotton, the new Christmas tree program will impose on U.S. domestic producers and importers an initial fee of 15 cents per tree.
A 12-member board will direct the money to generic ads and other promotions, as well as research. The promotions, according to the Agriculture Department, will present “a favorable image of Christmas trees to the general public,” with the intent of improving the public “perception” of Christmas trees and, hence, their sales.

The propaganda campaign: The Heritage Foundation, never a fount of truth, took this and turned it into a “Christmas Tree Tax.” Heritage: Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax,

President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

Look at the flat-out lie in that sentence: the Department will “impose” a tax. The industry asked the department to be allowed to chip in, but Heritages turns this into an Ayn Randian, “taxes are theft” statement. They conclude their statement with “The economy is barely growing and nine percent of the American people have no jobs. Is a new tax on Christmas trees the best President Obama can do?”

The propaganda-propelling machine: Remember as you read the following that the industry requested this, and was waiting for Ag Department approval, to help them promote natural over artificial trees.

Look at this huge headline at Drudge. Look at the racial-imagery choice of a picture. With this at Drudge, you can be sure the right’s propaganda machine will propel this lie across the world faster than truth can get its boots on.

Politico dutifully echoes: USDA OKs Christmas tree tax

Fox does its duty: Obama’s New ‘Christmas Tree Tax’

More Fox: Merry Christmas? Agriculture Department Imposes Christmas Tree Tax

Glenn Beck’s The Blaze: OBAMA ADMIN. ANNOUNCES TAX ON CHISTMAS TREES…TO IMPROVE ‘IMAGE’ OF CHISTMAS TREES

Forbes: Scrooge Comes Early This Year With “Christmas Tree Tax”

Cato: Yes, Virginia, There Is a Christmas Tree Tax

Watch the narrative explode at the Conservatives4Palin site: Obama’s New Christmas Tree Tax, Big Government Has Officially Exploded

Limbaugh isn’t on the air yet, but I suspect this will lead the show.

Posted in Let's Just Lie, Marketing, Propaganda, Smears | Tagged , | 3 Comments